Assessing the impact of island bird extinctions

All over the world we have seen a rise in extinction rates, and we are currently experiencing a global decline in biodiversity. Particularly islands have shown a disproportionate number of extinctions. Despite islands taking up only 3.5% of global area, they support a huge diversity of species as well as a large number of endemic species - this makes islands an important priority for conservation efforts fighting declining biodiversity. Furthermore, islands have historically been of great significance in the development of classic ecological theory (e.g., the island equilibrium theory, limiting similarity etc.) due to their isolation making them ideal as "natural laboratories". Islands gives the possibility to observe species interaction in somewhat isolation while having "samples" across different climatic zones, habitat types etc.

While we have some understanding of the number of extinctions, our understanding of the consequences to ecosystem services is less well understood. This includes mapping out current change/loss in ecological function as well as the potential for change in the future through increased vulnerability or a lack of robustness of the native community. Many species are increasingly threatened, and a continuation in the loss of many species along with a spread of few species is predicted for the future.

This project aims to look at the potential change in ecological function with species extinctions on islands. While this project is focused on avifauna, the hope is to include other taxonomic groups to get a broader perspective and better understanding of the ecological processes taking place in island communities. This will be done though analyses of functional traits to calculate changes in functional diversity of the community. Functional traits are morphological and/or physiological characteristics of the organism which impacts fitness - thus gives insight into an individual's "role" in the community outside the scope of species presence/absence. This knowledge has potential implications in the interpretation of classical ecological theories with application across ecosystems and could provide insight as well as a foundation for better mitigation and protection of biodiversity worldwide.