Bird populations and species lost to Late Quaternary environmental change and human impact in the Bahamas

Among the 90 resident species of landbirds known from Bahamian fossils, 62 species (69%) have different distributions today from in the recent past, ranging from single-island extirpations to global extinction. Placing the modern bird communities in a deeper time perspective shows how dynamic geographic ranges are through time, including providing explanations for illogical modern distributions and apparent endemism in the Caribbean. The fragmented existing Bahamian bird communities have withstood 1,000 y of human impact, and thus represent species with some resiliency. They nevertheless face an uncertain future because the factors that have fueled extirpations and extinctions through time are still at play.