Magnitude and variation of prehistoric bird extinctions in the Pacific
Edited by Robert E. Ricklefs, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, and approved February 26, 2013 (received for review September 21, 2012)
Abstract
The largest extinction event in the Holocene occurred on Pacific islands, where Late Quaternary fossils reveal the loss of thousands of bird populations following human colonization of the region. However, gaps in the fossil record mean that considerable uncertainty surrounds the magnitude and pattern of these extinctions. We use a Bayesian mark-recapture approach to model gaps in the fossil record and to quantify losses of nonpasserine landbirds on 41 Pacific islands. Two-thirds of the populations on these islands went extinct in the period between first human arrival and European contact, with extinction rates linked to island and species characteristics that increased susceptibility to hunting and habitat destruction. We calculate that human colonization of remote Pacific islands caused the global extinction of close to 1,000 species of nonpasserine landbird alone; nonpasserine seabird and passerine extinctions will add to this total.
Acknowledgments
We thank Phillip Cassey, Matt McGlone, Janet Wilmshurst, and two reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript; and Corinne Martin for kindly providing Pacific island location and area data. Support for this work was provided by National Science Foundation Grant DBI-0805669 (to A.G.B.), and funding for data collection efforts was provided by the Smithsonian Institution, University of New Mexico, and the American Museum of Natural History.
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Cover image: Pictured is a gargoyle gecko, Rhacodactylus auriculatus. Previous studies have examined how geckos stick to clean, dry laboratory surfaces, but how the gecko adhesive system functions in wet conditions remains unclear. Alyssa Y. Stark et al. measured gecko adhesion to a variety of surfaces under wet and dry conditions, and found that the animals can stick equally well to wet and dry hydrophobic surfaces, but not to wet hydrophilic surfaces. The findings suggest that water might not impair gecko adhesion to hydrophobic surfaces found in nature, such as plant leaves. See the article by Stark et al. on pages 6340–6345. Image courtesy of Alyssa Y. Stark.
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Published online: March 25, 2013
Published in issue: April 16, 2013
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Acknowledgments
We thank Phillip Cassey, Matt McGlone, Janet Wilmshurst, and two reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript; and Corinne Martin for kindly providing Pacific island location and area data. Support for this work was provided by National Science Foundation Grant DBI-0805669 (to A.G.B.), and funding for data collection efforts was provided by the Smithsonian Institution, University of New Mexico, and the American Museum of Natural History.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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