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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.
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]
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.
For example, 50% of endemic bird areas are found on islands. [2] Endemism is often the result of adaptive radiation. [1] Adaptive radiation is when a single species colonizes an area and rapidly diversifies to fill all of the available niches. A common example is the assemblage of finch species documented by Charles Darwin in the Galapagos ...
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 study of habitat fragmentation found its roots early, with Aldo Leopold’s ideas on edge effect and Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson’s studies and models of island biogeography laying a foundation for the field (Laurance and Bierregaard 1997). These concepts offer potential applicable and hypothetico-deductive value for the study of ...
The original drawing of the line in Wallace's paper. One of the earliest descriptions of the biodiversity in the Indo-Australian Archipelago dates back to 1521 when Venetian explorer Pigafetta recorded the biological contrasts between the Philippines and the Maluku Islands (Spice Islands) (on opposite sides of Wallace's Line) during the continuation of the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, after ...
This assumption is necessary in BBO because species represent the independent variables of a function, and each island represents a candidate solution to a function optimization problem. Islands with a high HSI not only have a high emigration rate, but they also have a low immigration rate because they already support many species.