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The extinction of hundreds of bird species caused by humans over the last 130,000 years has led to substantial reductions in avian functional diversity—a measure of the range of different roles and functions that birds undertake within the environment—and resulted in the loss of approximately 3 billion years of unique evolutionary history, according to a new study published in Science.

While humans have been driving a global erosion of species richness for millennia, the consequences of past extinctions for other dimensions of biodiversity are poorly known. Research led by the University of Birmingham highlights the severe consequences of the ongoing biodiversity crisis and the urgent need to identify the ecological functions being lost through extinction.

From the well-documented Dodo to the recent Kauaʻi ʻōʻō songbird declared extinct in 2023, scientists currently have evidence of at least 600 bird species having become extinct as a result of humans since the Late Pleistocene, when modern humans started to spread throughout the world.

Using the most comprehensive dataset to date of all known bird extinctions during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, the paper "The global loss of avian functional and phylogenetic diversity from anthropogenic extinctions" looks beyond the number of extinctions to the wider implications on the planet.

Lead author Dr. Tom Matthews from the University of Birmingham explained, "The sheer number of bird species that have become extinct is of course, a big part of the extinction crisis, but what we also need to focus on is that every species has a job or function within the environment and therefore plays a really important role in its ecosystem.

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