Reacción a "More than 1,300 bird species will become extinct in the next 200 years"

The research presented by Matthews et al. shows results that underline the severity of the biodiversity crisis and the urgency of identifying the ecological functions lost with each extinction. The authors report that, since the late Pleistocene (approximately 130,000 years ago), more than 600 bird species have become extinct (at least 562 extinctions due to anthropogenic causes!), causing a significant loss of ‘functional space’ and three billion years of unique evolutionary history. The latter implies that not only a lot of species, but entire branches of the tree of life have been lost. The results of their sophisticated modelling are very alarming, especially in projecting that more than 1000 species could become extinct in the next two centuries, further reducing functional and phylogenetic diversity. The consequences of such a reduction on the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning are not easy to predict, although several studies already suggest that various disruptions in ecological interactions (e.g. pollination or seed dispersal) could result in ecological collapse, especially on islands, whose ecosystems are more simplified and therefore more vulnerable to disturbance than mainland areas.

Matthews et al. have done a titanic task by compiling published data and information from expert taxonomists, differentiating between extinctions due to human activities (anthropogenic causes) and those due to unknown causes. For each extinct species, they have obtained measurements of a good set of morphological characters (from museum specimens and literature) to calculate functional diversity. In addition, they have constructed a global phylogeny of birds, including both Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions, from which - using null models - they have estimated the amount of phylogenetic diversity lost through these extinctions.

This high-impact study, based on decades of IUCN Red List data, reinforces a clear warning from science: uncontrolled human activity is causing massive devastation of biodiversity.