The shape of things to come: non-native mammalian predators and the fate of island bird diversity

Abstract

Oceanic islands and their avifaunas provide a wealth of information where changes to diversity across the Holocene have been intensively studied, and birds endemic to islands have been especially vulnerable to human occupancy. However, we still do not know the relative importance of the various different factors that have driven bird extinctions across oceanic islands, or what drives the success or failure of birds that have been introduced to oceanic islands either accidentally or purposefully by humans. This chapter reviews recent research on bird extinctions and invasions on oceanic islands, which indicates that the presence of non-native predatory mammals is a primary cause of both events. These invasions and extinctions have served to re-shape patterns of diversity across entire suites of oceanic islands, leading to biotic homogenization that is predicted to increase into the future.