Dataset Information

Changes in the functional diversity of modern bird species over the last million years.

ABSTRACT: Despite evidence of declining biosphere integrity, we currently lack understanding of how the functional diversity associated with changes in abundance among ecological communities has varied over time and before widespread human disturbances. We combine morphological, ecological, and life-history trait data for >260 extant bird species with genomic-based estimates of changing effective population size (Ne) to quantify demographic-based shifts in avian functional diversity over the past million years and under pre-anthropogenic climate warming. We show that functional diversity was relatively stable over this period, but underwent significant changes in some key areas of trait space due to changing species abundances. Our results suggest that patterns of population decline over the Pleistocene have been concentrated in particular regions of trait space associated with extreme reproductive strategies and low dispersal ability, consistent with an overall erosion of functional diversity. Further, species most sensitive to climate warming occupied a relatively narrow region of functional space, indicating that the largest potential population increases and decreases under climate change will occur among species with relatively similar trait sets. Overall, our results identify fluctuations in functional space of extant species over evolutionary timescales and represent the demographic-based vulnerability of different regions of functional space among these taxa. The integration of paleodemographic dynamics with functional trait data enhances our ability to quantify losses of biosphere integrity before anthropogenic disturbances and attribute contemporary biodiversity loss to different drivers over time.

SUBMITTER: Germain RR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9963860 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Changes in the functional diversity of modern bird species over the last million years.

Germain Ryan R RR Feng Shaohong S Buffan Lucas L Carmona Carlos P CP Chen Guangii G Graves Gary R GR Tobias Joseph A JA Rahbek Carsten C Lei Fumin F Fjeldså Jon J Hosner Peter A PA Gilbert M Thomas P MTP Zhang Guojie G Nogués-Bravo David D

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20230206 7

Despite evidence of declining biosphere integrity, we currently lack understanding of how the functional diversity associated with changes in abundance among ecological communities has varied over time and before widespread human disturbances. We combine morphological, ecological, and life-history trait data for >260 extant bird species with genomic-based estimates of changing effective population size (<i>N<sub>e</sub></i>) to quantify demographic-based shifts in avian functional diversity over ...[more]

PMID: 36745783

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Project description:While studies of taxonomy usually focus on species description, there is also a taxonomic correction process that retests and updates existing species circumscriptions on the basis of new evidence. These corrections may themselves be subsequently retested and recorrected. We studied this correction process by using the Check-List of North and Middle American Birds, a well-known taxonomic checklist that spans 130 years. We identified 142 lumps and 95 splits across sixty-three versions of the Check-List and found that while lumping rates have markedly decreased since the 1970s, splitting rates are accelerating. We found that 74% of North American bird species recognized today have never been corrected (i.e., lumped or split) over the period of the checklist, while 16% have been corrected exactly once and 10% have been corrected twice or more. Since North American bird species are known to have been extensively lumped in the first half of the 20th century with the advent of the biological species concept, we determined whether most splits seen today were the result of those lumps being recorrected. We found that 5% of lumps and 23% of splits fully reverted previous corrections, while a further 3% of lumps and 13% of splits are partial reversions. These results show a taxonomic correction process with moderate levels of recorrection, particularly of previous lumps. However, 81% of corrections do not revert any previous corrections, suggesting that the majority result in novel circumscriptions not previously recognized by the Check-List. We could find no order or family with a significantly higher rate of correction than any other, but twenty-two genera as currently recognized by the AOU do have significantly higher rates than others. Given the currently accelerating rate of splitting, prediction of the end-point of the taxonomic recorrection process is difficult, and many entirely new taxonomic concepts are still being, and likely will continue to be, proposed and further tested.

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Dataset Information

Changes in the functional diversity of modern bird species over the last million years.

Publications

Changes in the functional diversity of modern bird species over the last million years.

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