Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
203,203 studies31 sourcesUpdated 24 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BY 4.0PLOS Biology

Phylogenetic evidence that migratory behavior increases ungulate extinction rates

  • Joel O. Abraham1
  • Kaedan O’Brien2
  • Nathan S. Upham3
  • Brett R. Jesmer4
  • Faysal Bibi5
  • J. Tyler Faith6
6 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America
  2. 2Department of Anthropology, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, New York, United States of America
  3. 3School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America
  4. 4Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America
  5. 5School of Biological Sciences, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, United States of America,
  6. 6Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Berlin, Germany
Read full textPDFDOICite

Abstract

Widespread instances of migratory collapse have been documented within the past several decades, indicating that migration may be a fragile strategy in the Anthropocene. Yet the fragility of migration as a strategy for navigating seasonally variable resource availability may extend deeper into evolutionary time. We used phylogenetic imputation to infer the migratory habits of 51 ungulate species that went extinct during the late Quaternary and evaluated whether migration enhances extinction rates on macroevolutionary timescales. We found that ~80% (41 of 51) of recently extinct species were migratory, whereas only 46% (95 of 207) of extant ungulates are migratory. Furthermore, Hidden State Speciation and Extinction modeling indicated that migratory species likely experienced higher speciation and extinction rates compared to nonmigratory species, resulting in elevated lineage turnover for migratory ungulates, though diversification parameter estimates depended strongly upon whether extinct species were included in analyses. The extinctions of these ungulates led to negligible declines in global ungulate functional richness (0.8%) but more substantial declines (2.7%) across Africa. Altogether, our findings indicate that migration has complex macroevolutionary consequences, enhancing both speciation and extinction rates, which may render migration an evolutionarily fragile strategy, particularly as increasingly widespread and intensive anthropogenic activity cause gradients of resource availability to become severed (e.g., via human infrastructure) and more unpredictable (e.g., via climate change).

Collapsing ungulate migrations over the last several decades suggest that migration may be uniquely risky in the Anthropocene, or may represent the acceleration of a long-term evolutionary trend wherein migration increases extinction rates. We find that extinct species were disproportionately migratory, with migratory lineages exhibiting faster extinction, speciation, and diversification rates-evidence that migration may be evolutionarily fragile, associated with heightened extinction risk.

Related

  1. Phototroph-specific nitrogen isotopes detail N2-fixation increases at the end-Triassic extinction
    Calum P. Fox, Yuta Isaji, Nanako O. Ogawa +4
    Communications Earth & EnvironmentPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textEvolutionary biologyCrossref
  2. Running to Their Fates: Neural Crest and Placode Migratory Behavior and Cell Fate Decisions
    Junpeng Gao, Hugo A. Urrutia, Marianne E. Bronner
    Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in BiologyPreprintLicence not statedFull text2 citedCell biologyPMC
  3. Drought intensification increases extinction risk in the recalcitrant-seeded oak Quercus thorelii in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot.
    Yu Tu, Vyan, Hugh W Pritchard +4
    BMC plant biologyPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-NDFull textPlant biologyEurope PMCPMC
  4. Repeated Transitions in Migratory Behavior Across a Songbird Radiation Are Not Driven by Selection on Shared Variation in Candidate Genes
    S. J. Szarmach, K. F. P. Bennett, D. P. L. Toews
    bioRxivPreprintCC BYFull textEvolutionary biologybioRxiv
  5. Adolescent blockade of complement signaling in the lateral septum increases social novelty seeking behavior in male mice
    A. Djerdjaj, W. W. Taylor, O. T. Amoakohene +1
    bioRxivPreprintCC BY-NCFull textNeurosciencebioRxiv

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{abraham2026phylogenetic,
  title = {{Phylogenetic evidence that migratory behavior increases ungulate extinction rates}},
  author = {Joel O. Abraham and Kaedan O’Brien and Nathan S. Upham and Brett R. Jesmer and Faysal Bibi and J. Tyler Faith},
  journal = {PLOS Biology},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.3004072},
  url = {https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3004072},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Phylogenetic evidence that migratory behavior increases ungulate extinction rates
AU  - Joel O. Abraham
AU  - Kaedan O’Brien
AU  - Nathan S. Upham
AU  - Brett R. Jesmer
AU  - Faysal Bibi
AU  - J. Tyler Faith
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/11/05
JO  - PLOS Biology
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3004072
UR  - https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3004072
AB  - Widespread instances of migratory collapse have been documented within the past several decades, indicating that migration may be a fragile strategy in the Anthropocene. Yet the fragility of migration as a strategy for navigating seasonally variable resource availability may extend deeper into evolutionary time. We used phylogenetic imputation to infer the migratory habits of 51 ungulate species that went extinct during the late Quaternary and evaluated whether migration enhances extinction rates on macroevolutionary timescales. We found that ~80% (41 of 51) of recently extinct species were migratory, whereas only 46% (95 of 207) of extant ungulates are migratory. Furthermore, Hidden State Speciation and Extinction modeling indicated that migratory species likely experienced higher speciation and extinction rates compared to nonmigratory species, resulting in elevated lineage turnover for migratory ungulates, though diversification parameter estimates depended strongly upon whether extinct species were included in analyses. The extinctions of these ungulates led to negligible declines in global ungulate functional richness (0.8%) but more substantial declines (2.7%) across Africa. Altogether, our findings indicate that migration has complex macroevolutionary consequences, enhancing both speciation and extinction rates, which may render migration an evolutionarily fragile strategy, particularly as increasingly widespread and intensive anthropogenic activity cause gradients of resource availability to become severed (e.g., via human infrastructure) and more unpredictable (e.g., via climate change).  Collapsing ungulate migrations over the last several decades suggest that migration may be uniquely risky in the Anthropocene, or may represent the acceleration of a long-term evolutionary trend wherein migration increases extinction rates. We find that extinct species were disproportionately migratory, with migratory lineages exhibiting faster extinction, speciation, and diversification rates-evidence that migration may be evolutionarily fragile, associated with heightened extinction risk.
SN  - 1545-7885
ER  -