COSMOS MAGAZINE

What connects all bird extinctions in the last 500 years?

Biologists have analysed  traits of 216 bird species that have gone extinct since 1500 bid to inform the conservation of endangered birds.

Sketch of a Dodo. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Spectacled cormorant. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

- Endemic to islands - unable to fly - had larger bodies  - had sharply angled wings - and were highly specialised in their ecological niches.

They found that  species more likely to go extinct sooner were:

Hawai‘i has seen the highest loss of bird species with 34 disappearing since 1500 according to the study.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Drawing of extinct Rallidae. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The bird family which saw the greatest number of extinctions is Rallidae.

Since 1500, 26 species of these medium-sized, semi-aquatic birds went extinct.

Artwork by John Gerrard Keulemans. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The entire Mohoidae family – small nectar-sipping songbirds known as Hawai‘ian honeyeaters – have disappeared.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

About 2% of the world’s birds have gone extinct since 1500.

The 1890s saw the highest number of extinctions, with 21 recorded.

The 1980s was another bad decade for bird loss with 20 species.

Today, 1,314 birds are on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species – about 12% of total bird species.

Some, like the Akikiki (Oreomystis bairdi) endemic to Hawai‘ian island Kauai, are functionally extinct in the wild.

A critically endangered ‘Akikiki that study lead author Kyle Kittelberger photographed on Kauai in 2022.

Credit: Kyle Kittelberger.