I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was a nine year old being driven to Dunedin to see this new SF film that was supposed to be quite good. There in the Octagon Theatre my young mind was blown by what I saw. We’d never seen anything quite like it. I still can vividly recall the final attack run down the canyon on the Death Star. It was like you were in the cockpit of Luke’s X-Wing.
Over the last 47 years I have seen most of the Star Wars movies and series. I even didn’t mind the prequel movies. One of my favourite characters was Boba Fett, the bounty hunter. He seemed cool and I liked that he didn’t take off his helmet (I was also about to become a 2000AD Judge Dredd fan, probably for similar reasons). The Mandalorian, featuring more on the galaxy bounty hunters, is one of my favourite Star Wars series.
I’m not sure why I enjoy the SW IP, the stories are reasonably predictable, the names are awkward and clunky, but I guess it is fun, looks good and has some interesting diversity (it’s definitely not all filmed in an abandoned British quarry like most other SF at the time). I particularly liked the islands on Ahch-To where the elderly Luke Skywalker was living as a recluse. Their ruggedness, isolation and ‘bird’ fauna seemed like our NZ Subantarctic islands.
In the Subantarctic we have our own bounty hunter with the strangely Star Wars-like name of Pacificana cockayni. This spider species, like a Jedi hermit, is only found on the Bounty Islands (a wind-swept collection of small islets) that are very seldom visited by humans. It spends its time hunting among a sparse five other species of spiders and 22 insect species. There are a bunch of seabird species that use the islands for breeding. It’s a harsh place to live and has a precarious food web.
Pacificana cockayni was first collected by the great botanist, Leonard Cockayne, in 1903. There were a handful of future visits where female adults and juveniles were collected and finally a male was found. When describing a species it is useful to have adults of both sexes (and in spiders differences are exaggerated and easier to find in males). In more recent times molecular approaches, sequencing DNA, allows for a more precise understanding of who your species might be related to.
Cockayne sent the original samples to a leading British arachnologist of the time with a decidedly non-Star Wars name, but suitably impressive nonetheless, Henry Roughton Hogg (OK maybe a little Star Warsy… I can see an Imperial Star destroyer being commanded by Admiral Roughton Hogg). Hogg decided that Pacificana cockayni was different enough from other spiders to be in its own genus. He then guessed at the family. (“These aren’t the spiders you are looking for.”)
Over the years other travellers collected a handful of specimens when their journeys brought them to the Bountys. These include the great spider specialist Ray Forster. (“May the Forster be with you‘), one of my first PhD students, Frances Schmechel, and recent masters student, Robin Long.
Time moves on and we are not in that galaxy far far away now. Many of the spider species lumped together as a big group by Hogg have been moved to more accurate placements by spider specialists over the last century. Cor Vink (Lincoln University), Phil Sirvid (Museum of NZ) and Nadine Duperre (Liebniz Institute) decided to sort out the status of Pacificana cockayni. They could see that things were a mess (“Hogg, you have failed me for the last time“).
They looked carefully at the various structures of Pacificana cockayni and compared these to the various options for relatives (“Hmmm aren’t you kinda short to be a Miturgidae?”). For example, they found that the stridulatory field on prolateral face of male coxa of leg 1 was different to other closely related species (which to most sounds about as meaningful to the uninitiated as midiclorians).
Vink and colleagues were also able to get DNA from these species as well (or use DNA data that had already been collected). In a recent NZ Journal of Zoology paper they were not able to definitively sort out who the closest relatives of Pacificana cockayni were, but they could show that they had been evolutionary distinct for a long time. Given this distinctiveness and the limited range of this species to the small Bounty Islands archipelago, Pacificana cockayni faces some big problems. “I have a bad feeling about this.“
The maximum height of the Bountys is 73 m, creating a problem with sea level rise taking away land. Climate change is altering prey patterns for the seabird species that bring guano and carrion back to the islands, and which drives the simple invertebrate food webs. Bird populations are also declining through climate influences and from fisheries. Fewer birds means less food for everyone else that’s stuck on these islands (“It’s a trap!“). And, despite the isolation, there is always the risk of a rodent invasion from a visiting boat. Rodents love munching on large invertebrates.
Like a rare Jedi knight on the fringes of the galaxy, Pacificana cockayni have faced and triumphed over tough times. Vink and colleagues have allowed us to know just how special this species is and why we should work hard to protect it to give it a fair chance to survive into the future.
This is the way.
This article was written by Adrian Paterson (Pest-management and Conservation at Lincoln University). With writing EcoLincNZ articles, do or do not, there is no try.
