Island endemics evolve in isolation then crash when new predators arrive
On islands without native mammalian predators, birds often become flightless, ground-nesting, and fearless — traits that save energy until rats, cats, or snakes hitch a ride with humans.
Sudden predation then empties niches that took millennia to fill. Famous collapses from Hawai‘i to New Zealand show how endemism and naïveté combine into extinction risk.
Isolation is an evolutionary greenhouse and a trap. The same barriers that invent unique species leave them defenseless when the barrier is breached.
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