ArticleNature communications2023
Undiscovered bird extinctions obscure the true magnitude of human-driven extinction waves.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- The importance of migratory drop-off for island colonization in birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Global patterns and drivers of extinction risk in island endemic terrestrial vertebrates.Science advances · 2026Article
- Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene.Science advances · 2026Review
- Seasonal Differences in Migration Routes and Stopover Use of Greater Sand Plovers Between Mongolia and the Beibu Gulf Revealed by GPS Tracking.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Global biodiversity and the expanding Tree of Life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Underrepresentation of bats in Africa's protected areas.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Anthropocene Imperilment of Ancient Diversity and Evolutionary Potential in Terrestrial Vertebrates.Research square · 2025Article
- Recent extinctions of plant and animal genera are rare, localized, and decelerated.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Integrating Conservation and Community Engagement in Free-Roaming Cat Management: A Case Study from a Natura 2000 Protected Area.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- A reference genome for the Harpy Eagle reveals steady demographic decline and chromosomal rearrangements in the origin of Accipitriformes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Noise leads to the perceived increase in evolutionary rates over short time scales.PLoS computational biology · 2024Article
- Facilitating giant panda crossings of national highway in Wolong area of Giant Panda National Park amid human activities.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- High levels of species' extirpation in an urban environment-A case study from Berlin, Germany, covering 1700-2023.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The diversity of ignorance and the ignorance of diversity: origins and implications of "shadow diversity" for conservation biology and extinction.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2024Review
- Ocurrence dataset of birds in university campuses of Nanjing, Juangsu Province China.Biodiversity data journal · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Birds are among the best-studied animal groups, but their prehistoric diversity is poorly known due to low fossilization potential. Hence, while many human-driven bird extinctions (i.e., extinctions caused directly by human activities such as hunting, as well as indirectly through human-associated impacts such as land use change, fire, and the introduction of invasive species) have been recorded, the true number is likely much larger. Here, by combining recorded extinctions with model estimates based on the completeness of the fossil record, we suggest that at least ~1300-1500 bird species (~12% of the total) have gone extinct since the Late Pleistocene, with 55% of these extinctions undiscovered (not yet discovered or left no trace). We estimate that the Pacific accounts for 61% of total bird extinctions. Bird extinction rate varied through time with an intense episode ~1300 CE, which likely represents the largest human-driven vertebrate extinction wave ever, and a rate 80 (60-95) times the background extinction rate. Thus, humans have already driven more than one in nine bird species to extinction, with likely severe, and potentially irreversible, ecological and evolutionary consequences.
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