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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.
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.
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 ...
The bottom chart measures the genetic distance between all pairs of populations according to the Fst statistic. Populations separated by greater distance are more dissimilar than those that are geographically close. Isolation by distance (IBD) is a term used to refer to the accrual of local genetic variation under geographically limited ...
Also a common sense concept linked to the chances of an effective rescue effect on islands, is the size of the island itself. This is called the ‘target‐area effect’, and it states that:The larger the area of the island the more likely a colonization is, either of active or passive immigrants. [1]
As a result, island ecosystems comprise 30% of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, 50% of marine tropical diversity, and some of the most unusual and rare species. [2] Many species still remain unknown. The diversity of species on islands is highly impacted by human activities such as deforestation and introduction of the exotic species.
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 ...