Professor Richard Duncan, ‘The impact of humans; patterns of bird extinction in remote Pacific Islands’

The remote islands of the South Pacific were the last habitable region on Earth to be colonized by humans. A massive extinction event followed human colonization, with fossil deposits revealing the loss of thousands of bird populations on islands across the Pacific. However gaps in the fossil record mean that considerable uncertainty surrounds the magnitude and pattern of these extinctions. He will outline some new approaches that have been used to reconstruct the pattern of extinctions on Pacific islands that reveal humans had a massive impact on the biota, causing the global extinction of over 1,000 species of land-birds.
Professor Richard Duncan is Professor in Conservation Ecology at the Institute for Applied Ecology, University of Canberra. He has a PhD in Forest Ecology from the University of Canterbury, did postdoctoral research in the US and, prior to joining the IAE in 2013, worked at Lincoln University, New Zealand for 17 years. He has broad research interests but with a focus on the ecology of invasions and extinctions. While much of his research has an applied focus he is particularly interested in how we can use applied research to answer fundamental ecological questions, and how ecological theory can inform management. In 2011 Richard was awarded the TeTohuTaiao Award for Ecological Excellence by the New Zealand Ecological Society.