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Herbarium Specimens Reveal Putative Insect Extinction on the Deforested Island of Mangareva (Gambier Archipelago, French Polynesia)
- Pacific Science
- University of Hawai'i Press
- Volume 67, Number 4, October 2013
- pp. 553-560
- Article
- Additional Information
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Human activities are expected to result in extinction of many organisms in taxonomically neglected lineages; however, actually documenting these extinctions is very difficult for soft-bodied organisms that do not leave a subfossil record. Subfossil and historic records reveal that human-induced extinction has been particularly marked for gastropods and terrestrial vertebrates on Pacific islands, but whether human activities resulted in similar biodiversity loss in soft-bodied, taxonomically neglected animals (such as insects) remains unclear. However, in cases in which specialized plant-feeding insects leave diagnostic feeding damage on plants, herbarium specimens coupled with resurvey efforts may indicate potential extinctions or extirpations during historic times. Here, I report the discovery of leaf mines in herbarium specimens of the plant