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Balearic Islands
EUROPE
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO PALEOBIOLOGY
FIGURE 1.—Map of the Mediterranean region showing the position and nomenclature of the Balearic Islands
used in this paper. Eivissa is the Catalan name for the island known in other languages as Ibiza.
native, prehuman avifaunas as those of the other islands, we
have excluded Menorca and Formentera from our analysis. The
numbers of fossil bones presented above, together with data on
species distribution in the different deposits, allow a rough estimate
of relative species abundance on the islands, taphonomic
biases included.
The very different vertebrate paleofaunas of the Mediterranean-basin
archipelagos are of interest for comparison with
other insular faunas worldwide. Herein we present a preliminary
analysis of the paleoecology of the late Pleistocene bird
communities of the western Mediterranean islands based on
the known trophic ecology of the different species recorded on
the islands. We emphasize parallels with other known prehuman
native-bird communities worldwide. The Pleistocene bird
communities of the western Mediterranean mainly include extant
species, even though many have recently vanished from
several or all the islands considered. They also include at least
four or five extinct species: Tyto balearica Mourer-Chauvire,
Alcover, Moya, and Pons, a nonendemic species found on
Mallorca, Menorca, Corsica (Mourer-Chauvire, pers. comm.,
1996), and in some mainland deposits from France and the
Iberian Peninsula; Bubo insularis Mourer-Chauvire and Weesie,
endemic to Corsica and Sardinia; an undescribed species of
Athene endemic to Corsica (Mourer-Chauvire, pers. comm.,
1996); an undescribed species of Rallus endemic to Eivissa;
and Grus primigenia Milne-Edwards, a nonendemic species
widely distributed during the European Pleistocene, also
present on Eivissa and Mallorca, which is probably conspecific
with Grus grus (J.R. Stewart, pers. comm., 1996). Some
taxa previously considered as possible endemics (e.g., Fringillidae,
species undescribed, and Corvidae, species undescribed;
see Alcover et al., 1992) have been deleted after taxonomic
reappraisal. Nomenclature for binomials of modern
birds follows Sibley and Monroe (1990).
Even though the determination of the feeding habits and specializations
of extinct species may be imprecise or speculative,
the allocation of these species to broad trophic categories can
allow us to undertake a more general analysis. These kinds of
inferences are applicable to all the extinct Mediterranean species
considered above, but they cannot be extended indiscriminately,
especially in the case of bizarre small Passeriformes
without known analogs (e.g., Vangulifer from Maui, Hawaiian
Islands; James and Olson, 1991).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.—We are indebted to Storrs Olson,
Helen James, Dave Steadman, and Anna Traveset for their
comments, ideas, and useful discussions. Damia Jaume and