India, July 24 -- Human activities have fundamentally reshaped biodiversity patterns on islands across the globe, providing important implications for how scientists understand ecology, evolution and conservation, according to a new study.

Led by the University of Birmingham, the international team of researchers examined how species extinctions and introductions have transformed island ecosystems over millennia showing that islands have experienced a disproportionate share of global biodiversity loss.

Island endemic species account for around 75 per cent of recorded anthropogenic extinctions globally even as many islands have also received large numbers of introduced species.

The authors gave the example of the Hawaii archipelago, whe...