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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]
MacArthur was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, 1958–65, and professor of biology at Princeton University, 1965–72.He played an important role in the development of niche partitioning, and with E.O. Wilson he co-authored The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967), a work which changed the field of biogeography, drove community ecology and led to the development of modern ...
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.
Robert MacArthur (1930–1972) is best known in the field of Evolutionary Ecology for his work The Theory of Island Biogeography, in which he and his co-author propose "that the number of species on any island reflects a balance between the rate at which new species colonize it and the rate at which populations of established species become ...
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 ...
Isolated islands have been known to have greater levels of endemism since the 1970s when the theory of island biogeography, formulated by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, was developed. This higher occurrence of endemism is because isolation limits immigration of new species to the island, allowing new species to evolve separately from others ...
One classic scientific model in biogeography posits that a species must continue to colonize new areas through its life cycle (called a taxon cycle) in order to persist. Accordingly, colonisation and extinction are key components of island biogeography, a theory that has many applications in ecology, such as metapopulations. Another factor ...
Foster's rule, the island rule, or the island effect states that members of a species get smaller or bigger depending on the resources available in the environment. [ 28 ] [ 29 ] [ 30 ] The rule was first stated by J. Bristol Foster in 1964 in the journal Nature , in an article titled "The evolution of mammals on islands".