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Insular biogeography [1] or island biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness and diversification of isolated natural communities. The theory was originally developed to explain the pattern of the species–area relationship occurring in oceanic islands.
Foster's rule, also known as the island rule or the island effect, is an ecogeographical rule in evolutionary biology stating that members of a species get smaller or bigger depending on the resources available in the environment. For example, it is known that pygmy mammoths evolved from normal mammoths on small islands.
Using computer simulations, Colwell and Hurt (1994) and Willing and Lyons (1998) first pointed out that if species’ latitudinal ranges were randomly shuffled within the geometric constraints of a bounded biogeographical domain (e.g. the continents of the New World, for terrestrial species), species' ranges would tend to overlap more toward the center of the domain than towards its limits ...
The Theory of Island Biogeography is a 1967 book by the ecologist Robert MacArthur and the biologist Edward O. Wilson. [1] It is widely regarded as a seminal work in island biogeography and ecology. The Princeton University Press reprinted the book in 2001 as a part of the "Princeton Landmarks in Biology" series. [1]
Frank W. Preston, an early investigator of the theory of the species–area relationship, divided it into two types: samples (a census of a contiguous habitat that grows in the census area, also called "mainland" species–area relationships), and isolates (a census of discontiguous habitats, such as islands, also called "island" species–area ...
Generally speaking, the theory of island biogeography represents a collection of interwoven ideas (Harris 1984), describing patterns of floral and faunal communities on marine islands. It models fundamental processes such as dispersal, diversity and population dynamics of islands with regards to their area and distance from other islands or the ...
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In 1975, Jared Diamond suggested some "rules" for the design of protected areas, based on Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson's book The Theory of Island Biogeography.One of his suggestions was that a single large reserve was preferable to several smaller reserves whose total areas were equal to the larger.