Anthropogenic extinctions conceal widespread evolution of flightlessness in birds.

ABSTRACT: Human-driven extinctions can affect our understanding of evolution, through the nonrandom loss of certain types of species. Here, we explore how knowledge of a major evolutionary transition-the evolution of flightlessness in birds-is biased by anthropogenic extinctions. Adding data on 581 known anthropogenic extinctions to the extant global avifauna increases the number of species by 5%, but quadruples the number of flightless species. The evolution of flightlessness in birds is a widespread phenomenon, occurring in more than half of bird orders and evolving independently at least 150 times. Thus, we estimate that this evolutionary transition occurred at a rate four times higher than it would appear based solely on extant species. Our analysis of preanthropogenic avian diversity shows how

SUBMITTER: Sayol F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7710364 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature