Global invasion history and native decline of the common starling: insights through genetics

Abstract

Few invasive birds are as globally successful as the Common or European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris). Native to the Palearctic, the starling has been intentionally introduced to North and South America, South Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, enabling us to explore species traits that may contribute to its invasion success. Coupling the rich studies of life history and more recent explorations of genomic variation among invasions, we illustrate how eco-evolutionary dynamics shape the invasion success of this long-studied and widely distributed species. Especially informative is the comparison between Australian and North American invasions, because these populations colonized novel ranges concurrently and exhibit shared signals of selection despite distinct population histories. In this review, we describe population dynamics across the native and invasive ranges, identify putatively selected traits that may influence the starling’s spread, and suggest possible determinants of starling success world-wide. We also identify future opportunities to utilize this species as a model for avian invasion research, which will inform our understanding of species’ rapid evolution in response to environmental change.

Recent beak evolution in North American starlings after invasion

“…Therefore, comparisons of genetic diversity between native and invasive ranges are currently provisional. Relatedly, the source population for many of these introductions is historically documented as Britain, but this has not been confirmed with genetic data 7 . Comparisons between invasive ranges show that North America (NA) harbors higher mitochondrial haplotype diversity than Australia or South Africa, which may be due to rapid expansion in NA facilitated by climate matching with the native range.…”

“…There are ten recorded starling introductions to North America 7 . According to historical records, the only populations which became established were those from the introductions to New York (1890, 1891) and Oregon (1889, 1892).…”

“…By 1942, starlings had spread to the West Coast of the United States and now inhabit all U.S. states, most of Mexico, and parts of Southern Canada 4 . They were also introduced to New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and Argentina (between 1856 and 1987) [5][6][7] . A recent study estimated that European starlings are the second most abundant wild bird in the world, with a global population of 1.3 billion, ranked behind only the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) at 1.6 billion 8 .These multiple successful introductions of European starlings to different parts of the world make this species an exemplar of adaptation to new environments, population size expansion, and dispersal.…”

Species Diversity and Abundance of Starling Birds at Federal University Dutse, Nigeria

“…They are distributed across a wide range of habitat and are rarely migratory, although, some Starlings, especially hatching-year individuals, migrate up to several hundred miles (Johnson & Glahn, 1994). A plethora of studies have suggested decline in Starling bird population (Callaghan et al, 2021;Crick et al, 2002;Robinson et al, 2005;Stuart et al, 2023;Svensson, 2004). This study aimed to determine Starling species diversity and abundance, along with vegetation and seasonal variations at Federal University Dutse.…”

The genome of a globally invasive passerine, the common myna, Acridotheres tristis

“…Further, the common myna is a relative of the European starling ( Sturnus vulgaris ), another globally invasive passerine with a similar introduction history. 29 Such interspecies comparisons will provide an opportunity to examine whether molecular evolutionary processes behave in a conserved or stochastic manner across invasions of similar phylogenetic, ecological, and historical nature.…”