ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Coprolites reveal ecological interactions lost with the extinction of New Zealand birds.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Effective dispersal of fern spore and the ecological relevance of zoochory.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- DNA and spores from coprolites reveal that colourful truffle-like fungi endemic to New Zealand were consumed by extinct moa (Dinornithiformes).Biology letters · 2025Article
- Evidence for adaptation of colourful truffle-like fungi for birds in Aotearoa-New Zealand.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Phylogenomics of the psychoactive mushroom genusProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Thirty years of ancient DNA and the faunal biogeography of Aotearoa New Zealand: lessons and future directions.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2024Review
- Integrating paleoparasitological, paleogenetic, and archaeological data to understand the paleoecological scenario of pre-Columbian archaeological siteFrontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Deciphering Diets and Lifestyles of Prehistoric Humans through Paleoparasitology: A Review.Genes · 2023Review
- Article
- Mussel parasite richness and risk of extinction.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2022Article
- Article
- How microbiomes can help inform conservation: landscape characterisation of gut microbiota helps shed light on additional population structure in a specialist folivore.Animal microbiome · 2022Article
- Phanerozoic parasitism and marine metazoan diversity: dilution versus amplification.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Successful extraction of insect DNA from recent copal inclusions: limits and perspectives.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Integrative analysis of DNA, macroscopic remains and stable isotopes of dog coprolites to reconstruct community diet.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The decline of mammal functional and evolutionary diversity worldwide.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- A Standardized Approach for Shotgun Metagenomic Analysis of Ancient Dental Calculus.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2021Article
- Article
- Exceptionally preserved asphaltic coprolites expand the spatiotemporal range of a North American paleoecological proxy.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- De-Extinction.Genes · 2018Review
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6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Over the past 50,000 y, biotic extinctions and declines have left a legacy of vacant niches and broken ecological interactions across global terrestrial ecosystems. Reconstructing the natural, unmodified ecosystems that preceded these events relies on high-resolution analyses of paleoecological deposits. Coprolites are a source of uniquely detailed information about trophic interactions and the behaviors, gut parasite communities, and microbiotas of prehistoric animal species. Such insights are critical for understanding the legacy effects of extinctions on ecosystems, and can help guide contemporary conservation and ecosystem restoration efforts. Here we use high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of ancient eukaryotic DNA from coprolites to reconstruct aspects of the biology and ecology of four species of extinct moa and the critically endangered kakapo parrot from New Zealand (NZ). Importantly, we provide evidence that moa and prehistoric kakapo consumed ectomycorrhizal fungi, suggesting these birds played a role in dispersing fungi that are key to NZ's natural forest ecosystems. We also provide the first DNA-based evidence that moa frequently supplemented their broad diets with ferns and mosses. Finally, we also find parasite taxa that provide insight into moa behavior, and present data supporting the hypothesis of coextinction between moa and several parasite species. Our study demonstrates that HTS sequencing of coprolites provides a powerful tool for resolving key aspects of ancient ecosystems and may rapidly provide information not obtainable by conventional paleoecological techniques, such as fossil analyses.
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