The Theory of Island Biogeography 1st Edition by Robert H Macarthur , Edward O Wilson ISBN ‎0691088365 978-0691088365

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ISBN 10:0691088365

ISBN 13:978-0691088365

Author:Robert H.Macarthur , Edward O.Wilson 

Biogeography was stuck in a “natural history phase” dominated by the collection of data, the young Princeton biologists Robert H. MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson argued in 1967. In this book, the authors developed a general theory to explain the facts of island biogeography. The theory builds on the first principles of population ecology and genetics to explain how distance and area combine to regulate the balance between immigration and extinction in island populations. The authors then test the theory against data. The Theory of Island Biogeography was never intended as the last word on the subject. Instead, MacArthur and Wilson sought to stimulate new forms of theoretical and empirical studies, which will lead in turn to a stronger general theory. Even a third of a century since its publication, the book continues to serve that purpose well. From popular books like David Quammen’s Song of the Dodo to arguments in the professional literature, The Theory of Island Biogeography remains at the center of discussions about the geographic distribution of species. In a new preface, Edward O. Wilson reviews the origins and consequences of this classic book.

Table of contents: 

1. “The Zoology of Archipelagoes,” Charles Darwin wrote at an early moment in his career, “will be well worth examination.”¹ And so it has proved. The study of insular biogeography has contributed a major part of evolutionary theory and much of its clearest documentation. An island is certainly an intrinsically appealing study object. It is simpler than a continent or an ocean, a visibly discrete object that can be labelled with a name and its resident populations identified thereby. In the science of biogeography, the island is the first unit that the mind can pick out and begin to comprehend. By…

   Theories, like islands, are often reached by stepping stones. The “species-area” curves are such stepping stones. Our ultimate theory of species diversity may not mention area, because area seldom exerts a direct effect on a species’ presence. More often area allows a large enough sample of habitats, which in turn control species occurrence. However, in the absence of good information on diversity of habitats, we first turn to island areas.

   There exists within a given region of relatively uniform climate an orderly relation between the size of a sample area and the number of species found in that area. Darlington…

    

   The strikingly orderly relation between island area and species diversity has elicited several attempts to identify and to measure the contributing factors. Koopman (1958) selected a fauna—the bats of the southern Caribbean islands—in which distance could be minimized as an influence, and used its geography to illustrate the important roles played by both area and ecology in determining species diversity. His data, summarized in Figure 6, show how much major differences in ecology among islands can distort the area-diversity curve. Because such differences do occur over short distances in many parts of the world, area alone cannot be…

    

   In this chapter we shall attempt to relate the properties of the life history of a colonizing species to its chances for success and, if it fails, to the length of time it persists before going extinct. There is only a small amount of theory already available on this problem and a considerable volume of empirical but rather unsystematic lore, much of which has been collected in the recent volume on colonizing species edited by Baker and Stebbins (1965). Here we shall summarize and extend the theory and retell some of the lore most relevant to it.

   In the last chapter we dealt with the difficulties that face a colonizing propagule even when conditions favor the population’s increase. In our models the colonist was allowed to establish a beachhead, however briefly, and subsequent extinction was treated as a random variable. Now we turn to situations that prevent the colonist from successfully invading no matter how many times it tries. A community that cannot be invaded by a given species is “closed” to that species. Another, familiar way of putting it is to say that the species’ “niche” is already filled by other species. Yet this particular description…

    

   A central but hitherto intractable problem of biogeography is the estimation of the rate of exchange of species among source areas. This can be alternatively described as the estimation of the relative contributions of species of differing source areas to a recipient area. Although complex, the subject can be treated with enough formal analysis at this time to yield some qualitative generalizations.

   Let us begin with the simple and special case of competition between a “major” source island and a smaller, intermediately positioned “stepping-stone” island. The following question often arises in practice: By how much does a stepping stone that…

    

   Since we believe that evolution through natural selection has produced the biotic differences which characterize islands, it is appropriate for us to study how natural selection acts on islands and, in particular, how it actsdifferentlyon islands as opposed to mainlands.

   A slight digression on the history of natural selection theory will help put the discussion in perspective. As students are quick to point out to their teachers, the argument of natural selection is very nearly circular. In its circular form it says: (1) The more fit genotypes leave more descendants which, because of heredity, resemble their ancestors. (2)…

    

   Biogeography has long remained in a natural history phase, accumulating information about the distribution of species and higher taxa and the taxonomic composition of biotas. Interpretive reasoning has been largely directed to the solution of special problems connected with the histories of individual taxa and biotas. Without doubt this descriptive activity will continue to be of fundamental importance to the science, one of the most physically adventurous of all scientific enterprises and, in the richness of the detail it unfolds, esthetically pleasing. But biogeography is also in a position to enter an equally interesting experimental and theoretical phase.

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Robert H Macarthur, Edward O Wilson, Island,Biogeography