3/2/2024 0 Comments Casey paradise birdUnlike the five earlier die-offs, including the most recent one 65 million years ago that killed off dinosaurs, the current mass extinction is driven primarily by human activity including land, water and energy use and pollution. ‘The question is: how did this species manage to not go extinct despite having this massive loss of genetic diversity?’ said Hernán Morales, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.īiodiversity protection has shot up the EU agenda amid growing warnings that the world is undergoing a sixth mass extinction. Although the forest-dwelling birds are no longer considered critically endangered, the crash of their population has vastly reduced its genetic diversity. What’s more, a viable breeding population has been established on another island and work is underway to introduce the bird to a third one in the archipelago. In recent years, as local conservation efforts have improved, the numbers have risen and La Digue is now home to more than 250 Seychelles paradise flycatchers. The small black birds, which feed on insects and spiders, were devastated by habitat loss, invasive species and hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries. By the 1960s, just 28 of the winged creatures were left and all lived on one island, La Digue. As recently as the early 1800s, thousands of Seychelles paradise flycatcher birds lived on at least five islands off the southeast coast of Africa.
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