These legendary North American birds' flocks were so numerous that they blocked the sun from view for days when they flew over in the early and mid-1800s yet less than 50 years later, they were gone. As he recalled, most of his co-authors - Shou-Hsien Li, Bob Zink and others - were at that table when one of them mentioned the tragic story of the passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius. "We were talking about how evil humans can be to wildlife", writes Hung Chih-Ming in email. It was one of those career-altering dinner table discussions that seemed to carry on long into the night. Thus, the extinction of the passenger pigeon likely was due to the combined effects of natural population fluctuations and human over-exploitation. Instead, it was an "outbreak" species that experienced dramatic population fluctuations in response to variations in annual acorn production. A newly published study combines high throughput DNA technologies, ecological niche modeling and reconstructions of annual production of acorns upon which the birds fed to show that the passenger pigeon was not always super-abundant. Once the most abundant bird in the world with a population size estimated to be somewhere between 3 and 5 billion in the early and mid-1800s the sudden extinction of the passenger pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, in 1914, raises the question of how such an abundant bird could have become extinct in less than 50 years. The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again." Offset reproduction of watercolor by Louis Agassiz Fuertes (1874-1927). Passenger Pigeon, Ectopistes migratorius, juvenile (left), male (center), female (right).
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