ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Predictable evolution toward flightlessness in volant island birds.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 201 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Gene Flow Complicates Phylogenetic Inference in an Archipelago Radiation.Systematic biology · 2026Article
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- Comparative Anatomy Supports the Evolution of Nocturnality in the Extinct Hawaiian Ibis Apteribis.Integrative and comparative biology · 2026Article
- Island Syndrome in the Critically Endangered Lord Howe Island CockroachEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Geography, Environmental Conditions and Life History Shape Patterns of Within-Population Phenotypic Variation in North American Birds.Ecology letters · 2025Review
- Phylogenetic comparative analysis of functional morphology sheds light on the evolution of seasonal migration in nightingale-thrushes (Turdidae: Catharus).Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Skeletal trait measurements for thousands of bird species.Scientific data · 2025Article
- A South American sebecid from the Miocene of Hispaniola documents the presence of apex predators in early West Indies ecosystems.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The Relative Roles of Selection and Drift in the Chaffinch Radiation (Aves:Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Genomic patterns in the dwarf kingfishers of northern Melanesia reveal a mechanistic framework explaining the paradox of the great speciators.Evolution letters · 2024Article
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- Convergent evolution toward a slow pace of life predisposes insular endotherms to anthropogenic extinctions.Science advances · 2024Article
- Bird clades with less complex appendicular skeletons tend to have higher species richness.Nature communications · 2023Article
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- Simulating the dynamics of dispersal and dispersal ability in fragmented populations with mate-finding Allee effects.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Strength of the 'island rule' in birds is positively associated with absence of avian predators.Biology letters · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Birds are prolific colonists of islands, where they readily evolve distinct forms. Identifying predictable, directional patterns of evolutionary change in island birds, however, has proved challenging. The "island rule" predicts that island species evolve toward intermediate sizes, but its general applicability to birds is questionable. However, convergent evolution has clearly occurred in the island bird lineages that have undergone transitions to secondary flightlessness, a process involving drastic reduction of the flight muscles and enlargement of the hindlimbs. Here, we investigated whether volant island bird populations tend to change shape in a way that converges subtly on the flightless form. We found that island bird species have evolved smaller flight muscles than their continental relatives. Furthermore, in 366 populations of Caribbean and Pacific birds, smaller flight muscles and longer legs evolved in response to increasing insularity and, strikingly, the scarcity of avian and mammalian predators. On smaller islands with fewer predators, birds exhibited shifts in investment from forelimbs to hindlimbs that were qualitatively similar to anatomical rearrangements observed in flightless birds. These findings suggest that island bird populations tend to evolve on a trajectory toward flightlessness, even if most remain volant. This pattern was consistent across nine families and four orders that vary in lifestyle, foraging behavior, flight style, and body size. These predictable shifts in avian morphology may reduce the physical capacity for escape via flight and diminish the potential for small-island taxa to diversify via dispersal.
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