State of the World's Birds

Lees, Alexander Charles; Haskell, Lucy E.; Allinson, Tris; Bezeng, Simeon Bezeng; Burfield, Ian J.; Renjifo, Luis Miguel; Rosenberg, Kenneth V.; Viswanathan, Ashwin; Butchart, Stuart H. M.

doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-112420-014642

Cited by 113 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 153 publications

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“…Our analyses build on the findings of previous studies to highlight that the main threats to island endemic bird species are agricultural expansion, introduced species and biological resource use (e.g., hunting) (Table 1; Johnson & Stattersfield, 1990; Leclerc et al, 2018; Leclerc, Villéger, et al, 2020; Russell & Kueffer, 2019; Spatz et al, 2017; see Lees et al, 2022, for a review of threats to all bird species), with climate change expected to become an increasingly prevalent threat going forward (e.g., see Leclerc, Courchamp, & Bellard, 2020, for a vulnerability assessment of island endemic mammals and future climate change). There is a large literature on the impacts of introduced species on island species, in particular the loss of many endemic seabirds and ground‐nesting birds due to predation from introduced cats and rats (Bellard et al, 2016; Marino et al, 2022; Richards et al, 2021; Spatz et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity

Matthews

Wayman

Cardoso

et al. 2022

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim The world's islands support disproportionate levels of endemic avian biodiversity despite suffering numerous extinctions. While intensive recent research has focused on island bird conservation or extinction, few global syntheses have considered these factors together from the perspective of morphological trait diversity. Here, we provide a global summary of the status and ecology of extant and extinct island birds, the threats they face and the implications of species loss for island functional diversity. Location Global. Taxon Birds. Methods We provide a review of the literature on threatened and extinct island birds, with a particular focus on global studies that have incorporated functional diversity. Alongside this, we analyse IUCN Red List data in relation to distribution, threats and taxonomy. Using null models and functional hypervolumes, in combination with morphological trait data, we assess the functional diversity represented by threatened and extinct island endemic birds. Results and main conclusions We find that almost half of all island endemic birds extant in 1500 CE are currently either extinct or threatened with extinction, with the majority of threatened extant species having declining population trends. We also found evidence of 66 island endemic subspecies extinctions. The primary threats to extant island endemic birds currently are agriculture, biological resource use, and invasive species. While there is overlap between the hotspots of threatened and extinct island endemics birds, there are some notable differences, including the Philippines and Indonesia, which support a substantial number of threatened species but have no recorded post‐1500 CE bird extinctions. Traits associated with threatened island endemic birds are large body mass, flightlessness, aquatic predator, omnivorous and vertivorous trophic niches, marine habitat affinity, and, paradoxically, higher dispersal ability. Critically, we find that threatened endemics (i) occupy distinct areas of beak morphospace, and (ii) represent substantial unique areas of the overall functional space of island endemics. We caution that the loss of threatened species may have severe effects on the ecological functions birds provide on islands.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Threatened and extinct island endemic birds of the world: Distribution, threats and functional diversity

Matthews

Wayman

Cardoso

et al. 2022

Journal of Biogeography

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“…However, the decline in bird populations at the scale of continents (Bowler et al 2019, Rosenberg et al 2019), including within undisturbed habitats like in Amazonian rainforest (Stouffer et al 2021) point to the putative role of global and regional stressors linked to climate change. The overall change in bird populations is likely to be the result of recent and historic anthropogenic disturbances at both local (Laurance 2008) as well as global or regional changes in climate (Sherry 2021, Lees et al 2022). Studies that fail to detect population declines nevertheless reveal some form of compensatory buffering: generalist birds make up for declining specialists (Bowler et al 2019), taxonomic redundancy buffers against the erosion of functional diversity (Oliveira & dos Anjos 2022), and even within a species, birds adapt (Jirinec et al 2021) or acclimatize (Martin & Mouton 2020) to increasing stress from changing land-use and climate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Forest bird decline and community change over 19 years in long-isolated South Asian tropical rainforest fragments

Surendra¹,

Raman²

2022

Preprint

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Recent evidence of forest bird declines worldwide is attributed to climate change and its interactive effects with recent landuse changes such as forest loss and fragmentation, and avian life-history traits. In Asian tropical forests, such effects are poorly understood as longterm data are lacking from fragments that are long isolated rather than recently fragmented. Here, we use data from ~2000 point counts from bird surveys carried out between 2000 to 2005 and 2019 in 19 long isolated (~80 y) South Asian tropical rainforest fragments to examine changes in bird species richness, density, and composition in relation to fragment area (0.7 to 4310 ha), habitat structure, and time. Over the 19 y timespan, despite stable fragment areas, we uncovered a 29% decline in rainforest bird density and 7% decline in individual-rarefied species richness of rainforest birds, while density and richness of open-country birds remained stable. With increasing fragment area, rainforest bird species richness (jackknife estimate) increased, while open country bird richness (individual-rarefied) and density decreased. Larger fragments housed more compositionally stable bird communities, while poorer habitat was associated with lower diversity of rainforest birds but higher diversity, density, and compositional variation of open-country birds. Threshold analysis however indicated relatively small area thresholds (~20 ha) for rainforest bird species abundance. Besides identifying alarming declines in rainforest birds, the study confirms some but not all predictions for bird diversity in long-isolated forest fragments with stable forest-matrix boundaries, indicating that small fragments and habitat quality also matter.

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“…The precipitous decline of avifauna across the globe has captured the attention of scientists and the public alike (Rosenberg et al 2019;Lees et al 2022). Aerial insectivores, species that forage for insects on the wing, including swallows (Hirundinidae), swifts (Apodidae), flycatchers (Tyrannidae), and nightjars (Caprimulgidae), are some of the steepest declining bird groups in North America and elsewhere over the past 60 years (Bowler et al 2019;NABCI 2019;Rosenberg et al 2019;Woodward et al 2020).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%