Geographic and ecological segregation in an extinct guild of flightless birds: New Zealand’s moa

The nine currently recognized species of moa (Order – Dinornithiformes; Bonaparte 1853) suffered extinction soon after New Zealand was settled by humans.  They were the result an evolutionary radiation that produced a unique guild birds giant, and totally wingless evolved in absence non-volant mammals.   Recent advances dating paleoclimatology, compilations data on distributions moa, along with information geographic, topographic, climatic edaphic characteristics sites from which remains have been recovered, enabled us to test whether their truly ‘adaptive’, producing ecologically distinct species.  Randomization, resampling analyses across North South Islands revealed highly significant geographic ecological segregation, different tending occupy islands, regions within or elevations regions.  Quadratic Discriminant Analyses demonstrated niche segregation at even finer scales, including based vegetation-defined habitats local climatic, topographic conditions.  Moa also appear dynamic over time, shifting upper elevational limits as conditions changed vegetative zones shifted upward during Holocene Epoch.  Our ongoing studies are building results presented here explore temporal dynamics distributions, assess differential responses natural anthropogenic drivers, determine how these forces may combined cause just few centuries ago.