Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
Research Article

Drastic population fluctuations explain the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon

Chih-Ming Hung, Pei-Jen L. Shaner, Robert M. Zink, Wei-Chung Liu, Te-Chin Chu, Wen-San Huang, and Shou-Hsien Li
  1. aDepartment of Life Science and
  2. dDepartment of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 116, Taiwan;
  3. bDepartment of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, and Bell Museum, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108;
  4. cInstitute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan;
  5. eDepartment of Biology, National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung 404, Taiwan; and
  6. fDepartment of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS July 22, 2014 111 (29) 10636-10641; first published June 16, 2014; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1401526111
Chih-Ming Hung
aDepartment of Life Science and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Pei-Jen L. Shaner
aDepartment of Life Science and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Robert M. Zink
bDepartment of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, and Bell Museum, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Wei-Chung Liu
cInstitute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Te-Chin Chu
dDepartment of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei 116, Taiwan;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Wen-San Huang
eDepartment of Biology, National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung 404, Taiwan; and
fDepartment of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: wshuang@mail.nmns.edu.tw t43028@ntnu.edu.tw
Shou-Hsien Li
aDepartment of Life Science and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: wshuang@mail.nmns.edu.tw t43028@ntnu.edu.tw
  1. Edited by Wen-Hsiung Li, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and approved May 27, 2014 (received for review January 24, 2014)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

The number of passenger pigeons went from billions to zero in mere decades, in contrast to conventional wisdom that enormous population size provides a buffer against extinction. Our understanding of the passenger pigeon’s extinction, however, has been limited by a lack of knowledge of its long-term population history. Here we use both genomic and ecological analyses to show that the passenger pigeon was not always super abundant, but experienced dramatic population fluctuations, which could increase its vulnerability to human exploitation. Our study demonstrates that high-throughput–based ancient DNA analyses combined with ecological niche modeling can provide evidence allowing us to assess factors that led to the surprisingly rapid demise of the passenger pigeon.

Abstract

To assess the role of human disturbances in species’ extinction requires an understanding of the species population history before human impact. The passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in the world, with a population size estimated at 3–5 billion in the 1800s; its abrupt extinction in 1914 raises the question of how such an abundant bird could have been driven to extinction in mere decades. Although human exploitation is often blamed, the role of natural population dynamics in the passenger pigeon’s extinction remains unexplored. Applying high-throughput sequencing technologies to obtain sequences from most of the genome, we calculated that the passenger pigeon’s effective population size throughout the last million years was persistently about 1/10,000 of the 1800’s estimated number of individuals, a ratio 1,000-times lower than typically found. This result suggests that the passenger pigeon was not always super abundant but experienced dramatic population fluctuations, resembling those of an “outbreak” species. Ecological niche models supported inference of drastic changes in the extent of its breeding range over the last glacial–interglacial cycle. An estimate of acorn-based carrying capacity during the past 21,000 y showed great year-to-year variations. Based on our results, we hypothesize that ecological conditions that dramatically reduced population size under natural conditions could have interacted with human exploitation in causing the passenger pigeon’s rapid demise. Our study illustrates that even species as abundant as the passenger pigeon can be vulnerable to human threats if they are subject to dramatic population fluctuations, and provides a new perspective on the greatest human-caused extinction in recorded history.

  • genome sequences
  • ancient DNA
  • toe pad

Footnotes

  • ↵1C.-M.H. and P.-J.L.S. contributed equally to this work.

  • ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: wshuang{at}mail.nmns.edu.tw or t43028{at}ntnu.edu.tw.
  • Author contributions: C.-M.H., P.-J.L.S., R.M.Z., and S.-H.L. designed research; C.-M.H., P.-J.L.S., R.M.Z., and S.-H.L. performed research; W.-S.H. and S.-H.L. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.-M.H., P.-J.L.S., W.-C.L., and T.-C.C. analyzed data; and C.-M.H., P.-J.L.S., R.M.Z., W.-S.H., and S.-H.L. wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

  • Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database (accession no. SRP042357).

  • See Commentary on page 10400.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1401526111/-/DCSupplemental.

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Drastic population fluctuations explain the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Passenger pigeon was not always super abundant
Chih-Ming Hung, Pei-Jen L. Shaner, Robert M. Zink, Wei-Chung Liu, Te-Chin Chu, Wen-San Huang, Shou-Hsien Li
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 2014, 111 (29) 10636-10641; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1401526111

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Passenger pigeon was not always super abundant
Chih-Ming Hung, Pei-Jen L. Shaner, Robert M. Zink, Wei-Chung Liu, Te-Chin Chu, Wen-San Huang, Shou-Hsien Li
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 2014, 111 (29) 10636-10641; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1401526111
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Evolution

See related content:

  • Range and population in an extinct bird
    - Jun 30, 2014
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 111 (29)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Results and Discussion
    • Conclusions
    • Methods
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Setting sun over a sun-baked dirt landscape
Core Concept: Popular integrated assessment climate policy models have key caveats
Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Model of the Amazon forest
News Feature: A sea in the Amazon
Did the Caribbean sweep into the western Amazon millions of years ago, shaping the region’s rich biodiversity?
Image credit: Tacio Cordeiro Bicudo (University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), Victor Sacek (University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil), and Lucy Reading-Ikkanda (artist).
Syrian archaeological site
Journal Club: In Mesopotamia, early cities may have faltered before climate-driven collapse
Settlements 4,200 years ago may have suffered from overpopulation before drought and lower temperatures ultimately made them unsustainable.
Image credit: Andrea Ricci.
Steamboat Geyser eruption.
Eruption of Steamboat Geyser
Mara Reed and Michael Manga explore why Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser resumed erupting in 2018.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Birds nestling on tree branches
Parent–offspring conflict in songbird fledging
Some songbird parents might improve their own fitness by manipulating their offspring into leaving the nest early, at the cost of fledgling survival, a study finds.
Image credit: Gil Eckrich (photographer).

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490