A bird’s-eye view of avian extinctions

Abstract

Human impacts have substantially truncated global biodiversity, but we are only beginning to understand the magnitude and effects of humaninduced extinctions on aspects of biodiversity other than species richness. Quantifying biodiversity beyond this factor is important because although species richness is a tractable metric of biodiversity, it does not directly inform on a species’ ecological roles and functions and how the loss of those functions reverberates through an ecosystem. On page 55 of this issue, Matthews et al. (1) report how anthropogenic extinctions affect global avian biodiversity along two potentially complementary axes: functional diversity and phylogenetic diversity. The results advance understanding of how human impacts have already eroded the functional capacities and evolutionary histories of ecosystems worldwide, foreshadow a continued era of biodiversity loss, and underscore the urgent need to quantify the ecological services provided by birds worldwide.