According to a recent study, bird species with unusual or severe combinations of features are most at risk of going extinct. The findings were published in the British Ecological Society journal Functional Ecology.
The most distinctive birds on the planet, according to a recent study done by scientists at Imperial College London, are also the most endangered. The loss of these species and the distinctive ecological functions they perform, such as seed distribution, pollination, and predation, could have a negative impact on ecosystem health.
The study, which is the most thorough of its kind to date, examined the extinction risk and physical characteristics (such as wing length and beak shape) of 99% of all existing bird species.
The scientists discovered that there would be a noticeably higher decline in the physical (or morphological) diversity among birds in simulated scenarios where all threatened and near-threatened bird species went extinct than in scenarios where extinctions were random.
The Christmas Frigatebird (Fregata andrewsi), which only breeds on Christmas Island, and the Bristle-thighed Curlew (Numenius tahitiensis), which makes an annual migration from its breeding grounds in Alaska to the South Pacific islands, are two bird species that are both morphologically distinctive and endangered.
“Our work suggests that extinctions will most certainly cut a high proportion of unique species from the bird tree,” said Jarome Ali, a PhD candidate at Princeton University who conducted the research at Imperial College London. The specialized roles that these rare species fill in ecosystems will disappear if they become extinct.
Ecosystems will be severely affected if we do not take action to safeguard threatened species and prevent extinctions.
The authors of the study employed a dataset of measurements taken from 9943 different bird species, both living birds and museum specimens. Physical characteristics such as beak size and form as well as the lengths of wings, tails, and legs were measured.
Based on the IUCN Red List’s current threat classifications for each species, the authors linked the morphological data with the risk of extinction. Then they performed simulations to see what would occur if the most endangered bird species became extinct.
The information utilized in the study was able to demonstrate that the most distinctive birds were also listed as threatened on the Red List, but it was unable to demonstrate the relationship between avian uniqueness and extinction risk.
One hypothesis, according to Jarome Ali, is that highly specialized organisms are less able to adapt to a changing environment. If this is the case, human activities may directly endanger species that play the most peculiar ecological roles. The relationship between distinctive features and extinction danger requires further study.
