State of the world's birds

Distribution of the world’s birds by geographic realm and country

Newton (2003), analysis of data held in BirdLife’s World Bird Database 2008

Around 10,000 different species of birds currently inhabit the Earth, the majority (83%) occurring in continental regions, the remainder on islands. Birds are found from the lowest altitudes on earth to the highest mountains. This great diversity of land-, water- and seabird species is distributed across the world, and even the smallest nations have their own bird faunas. The state of the world’s birds therefore tells us a lot about the state of the world. However, the distribution of birds is uneven: the different biogeographic realms vary substantially in terms of the numbers and types of bird species they hold (see map). By far the richest is the Neotropical realm, which holds 36% of all known landbird species (c.3,370 species). This is followed by the Afrotropical (21%, c.1,950 species), Indomalayan (18%, c.1,700 species), Australasian (17%, 1,590 species), and then the Palearctic (10%, 937 species), Nearctic (8%, 732 species) and Oceanic (2%, 187 species) realms. Though they have relatively few species in total, the Pacific islands in the Oceanic region are unusually rich for their size; together they hold 20 times more species per unit area than South America, the richest of the continents (Newton 2003). Country by country, the richest territories for avian diversity are Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Indonesia (each with more than 1,500 species), followed by Bolivia, Venezuela, China, India, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Tanzania, Kenya and Argentina (all around 1,000 or more; BirdLife International unpublished data).

These big geographic differences in bird species diversity result from the differing conditions experienced over evolutionary time. Particularly influential is the variety (and area) of different habitats present. Tropical forests are especially rich in species; hence the particularly high avian diversity found in the equatorial regions. Other major influences include physical barriers such as impassable oceans and mountain ranges, climatic events such as the recent glacial cycles, biotic constraints such as natural enemies and competing species and, more recently, expanding and pervasive human impacts. The distributions of other taxa are less well-known than those of birds, but they are also determined by these fundamental biogeographic factors. This makes birds a useful starting point for mapping broad-scale patterns in species richness and endemism.