School of Geography & the Environment, University of Oxford: FHS Geography

Biogeography special subject HT 2012 additional island biogeography tutorial

Tutorial A: Island ecology
a) How well do we understand the processes that control the turnover of species on islands?
b) Islands only produce a greater or less number of species, as their circumference is more or
less extensive. (J.R. Forster, 1778, Chapter V, p. 120). Discuss.
c) How well do we understand the factors controlling the membership of island faunas and
floras? [check out work on assembly rules, nestedness and successional structure]
Tutorial B: Evolution on islands
a. What do you consider the most generally applicable model of speciation within
archipelagos?
b. Describe and account for the evolved traits characterising island forms: do they suggest that
there is such a thing as an island syndrome?
c. Describe and evaluate the model of speciation on islands by adaptive radiation.
d. Explain how area, isolation and island age interact to determine patterns of island evolution.
READING see the reading for the lectures and then browse for relevant titles below
Tutorial topic 1 - Island Ecology
Core reading: Whittaker, R. J. and Fernndez-Palacios, J.M. (2007) Island biogeography:
ecology, evolution, and conservation, 2nd edn. OUP, Oxford. See chapters 4,5 and 6.
Cook, R.R. and Quinn, J.F. (1995). The influence of colonization in nested species subsets.
Oecologia, 102, 413-25.
*Diamond, J.M. 1974. Colonization of exploded volcanic islands by birds: the supertramp
strategy. Science, 184, 803-806.
Gotelli, N. J. and McCabe, D. J. (2002). Species co-occurrence: a meta-analysis of J.M.
Diamonds assembly rules model. Ecology, 83, 2091-2096.
*Global Ecology and Biogeography (2000) Special issue on Island Biogeography, vol. 9, issue
1.
*Haila, Y. (1990). Towards an ecological definition of an island: a northwest European
perspective. Journal of Biogeography 17, 561-568.
Kalmar, A. and Currie, D. J. (2006) A global model of island biogeography. Global Ecology
and Biogeography, 15, 72-81.
Kelly, B.J., Bastow Wilson, J. & Mark, A.F. 1989. Causes of the species-area relation: a study
of islands in Lake Manapouri, New Zealand. J. Ecol. 77, 1021-1028.

Kohn, D.D. & Walsh, D.M. (1994). Plant species richness: The effect of island size and habitat
diversity. Journal of Ecology 82, 367-377.
Lomolino, M. V. (1990). The target area hypothesis: the influence of island area on
immigration rates of non-volant mammals. Oikos, 57, 297-300.
*Lomolino, M. V. (1996) Investigating causality of nestedness of insular communities:
selective immigrations or extinctions? Journal of Biogeography, 23, 699-703.
Lomolino, M. V. and Davis, R. (1997). Biogeographic scale and biodiversity of mountain
forest mammals of western North America. Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters, 6,
57-76.
Lomolino, M.V. (2000) A species-based theory of insular zoogeography. Global Ecology &
Biogeography, 9, 39-58.
Lomolino, M.V. (2000a) A call for a new paradigm of island biogeography. Global Ecology
and Biogeography, 9, 1-6.
*Lomolino, M.V. (2000b) A species-based theory of insular zoogeography. Global Ecology
and Biogeography, 9, 39-58.
*MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. 1963. An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography.
Evolution 17: 373-387. - and of course see their 1967 monograph.
MacNally, R. and Lake, P.S. (1999) On the generation of diversity in archipelagos: a reevaluation of the Quinn-Harrison saturation index. Journal of Biogeography, 26, 285295.
Rosenzweig, M.L. (1995). Species diversity in space and time. Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Russell, G. J., Diamond, J. M., Pimm, S. L., and Reed, T. M. (1995). A century of turnover:
community dynamics at three timescales. Journal of Animal Ecology, 64, 628-41.
Rydin, H., & Borgegard, S-O. 1991. Plant characteristics over a century of primary succession
on islands: Lake Hjalmaren. Ecology 72: 1089-1101.
Sanderson, J.G., Moulton, M.P. & Selfridge, R.G. (1999) Null matrices and the analysis of
species co-occurrences. Oecologia, 116, 275-283.
*Shrader-Frechette, K. S. and McCoy, E. D. (1993). Method in ecology: strategies for
conservation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Triantis, K. A., M. Mylonas, and R. J. Whittaker, R.J. 2008. Evolutionary speciesarea curves
as revealed by single-island endemics: insights for the inter-provincial speciesarea
relationship. Ecography 31: 401407.
Triantis, K. A., M. Mylonas, K. Lika and K. Vardinoyannis. 2003. A model for the species
areahabitat relationship. Journal of Biogeography 30: 1927.
Triantis, K. A., K. Vardinoyannis, E. Tsolaki, I. Botsaris, K. Lika, and M. Mylonas. 2006. Reapproaching the small island effect. Journal of Biogeography 33: 914923.
Triantis, K. A., Mylonas, M., Weiser, M.D., Lika, K., and Vardinoyannis, K. (2005) Species
richness, environmental heterogeneity and area: A case study based on land snails in
Skyros archipelago (Aegean Sea, Greece). Journal of Biogeography, 32, 1727-1735.
Williamson, M. H. (1989a). The MacArthur and Wilson theory today: true but trivial. J.
Biogeogr. 16, 3-4.
Williamson, M. H. (1989b). Natural extinction on islands. Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London, B 325, 457-68.
Worthen, W.B. (1996). Community composition and nested-subset analyses: basic descriptors
for community ecology. Oikos, 76, 417-26.
Wright, D. H. (1983). Species-energy theory: an extension of species-area theory. Oikos, 41,
496-506.

Tutorial topic 2: Island Evolution

Core reading: Whittaker, R. J. and Fernndez-Palacios, J.M. (2007) Island biogeography:
ecology, evolution, and conservation, 2nd edn. OUP, Oxford. See: Chapters 3, 7,8,9
Bunnefeld, N. and Phillimore, A. B. (2012), Island, archipelago and taxon effects: mixed
models as a means of dealing with the imperfect design of nature's experiments.
Ecography, 35: 1522. [Re-analysis of GDM using different form of statistical protocol]
Cardoso, P., Arnedo, M. A., Triantis, K. A. and Borges, P. A. V. (2010), Drivers of diversity in
Macaronesian spiders and the role of species extinctions. Journal of Biogeography,
37, 10341046. [Evaluates the General Dynamic Model]
Carine, M. A., Russell, S.J., Santos-Guerra, A., and Francisco-Ortega, J. (2004) Relationships
of the Macaronesian and Mediterranean floras: molecular evidence for multiple
colonizations into Macaronesia and back-colonization of the continent in Convolvulus
(Convolvulaceae). American Journal of Botany, 91, 1070-1085.
Cook, L.G. & Crisp, M.D. (2005) Directional asymmetry of long-distance dispersal and
colonization could mislead reconstructions of biogeography. Journal of Biogeography, 32,
741 754.
Emerson, B.C. (2002). Evolution on oceanic islands: molecular phylogenetic approaches to
understanding pattern and process. Molecular Ecology, 11, 951-966.
Emerson, B.C. and Kolm, N. (2005a) Species diversity can drive speciation. Nature, 434,
10151017. [Several papers have critiqued this interesting study: follow up the forward
citation links using ISI, or Google Scholar]
Emerson, B.C. and Kolm, N. (2005b) Emerson and Kolm reply. Nature, doi:
10.1038/nature04309.
Francisco-Ortega, J., Jansen, R. K. and Santos-Guerra, A. (1996). Chloroplast DNA evidence
of colonization, adaptive radiation and hybridization in the evolution of the Macaronesian
flora. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,
24, 249-266.
Francisco-Ortega, J., Santos-Guerra, A., Kim, S. C., and Crawford, D. J. (2000). Plant genetic
diversity in the Canary Islands: a conservation perspective. American Journal of Botany,
87, 909-919.
Gillespie, R.G. (2004) Community assembly through adaptive radiation in Hawaiian spiders.
Science, 303, 356359.
Givnish, T.J. et al. (2009) Origin, adaptive radiation and diversification of the Hawaiian
lobeliads (Asterales: Campanulaceae). Proc. R. Soc. B, 276, 407416.
Grant, P. R. (2002). Founder effects and silvereyes. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, USA, 99, 7818-20.
Heaney, L. R. (2007), Is a new paradigm emerging for oceanic island biogeography?. Journal
of Biogeography, 34, 753757.
Heaney, L. R., Walsh, J. S., Jr., and Peterson, A. T. (2005). The roles of geological history and
colonization abilities in genetic differentiation between mammalian populations in the
Philippine archipelago. Journal of Biogeography, 32, 229-247.
Juan, C., Emerson, B. C., Orom, P. and Hewitt, G. M. (2000). Colonization and
diversification: towards a phylogenetic synthesis for the Canary Islands. Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 15, 104-109.
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Kvist, L., Broggi, J., Illera, J.C., and Koivula, K. (2005) Colonisation and diversification of
the blue tits (Parus caeruleus teneriffae-group) in the Canary Islands. Molecular
Phylogenetics and Evolution, 34, 501511.
Lomolino, M. V. (2005). Body size evolution in insular vertebrates: generality of the island
rule. Journal of Biogeography, 32, 1683-99.
Meiri, S., Dayan, T. & Simberloff, D. (2006) The generality of the island rule reexamined.
Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1571-1577.
Meiri, S., Raia, P. and Phillimore, A. B. (2011), Slaying dragons: limited evidence for unusual
body size evolution on islands. Journal of Biogeography, 38: 89100.
Ricklefs, R.E. and Bermingham, E. (2002) The concept of the taxon cycle in biogeography.
Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 353-362.
Rocha, S., Carretero, M.A., Vences, M., Glaw, F., and Harris, D.J. (2006) Deciphering patterns
of trans-oceanic dispersal: the evolutionary origin and biogeography of coastal lizards
(Cryptoblepharus) in the western Indian Ocean region. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 1322.
Stuessy, T.F., Jakubowsky,G. Salguero Gmez, R., Pfosser, M., Schlter, P.M., Fer, T., Sun,
B.-Y., and Kato, H. (2006) Anagenetic evolution in island plants. Journal of
Biogeography,33, 1259-1265.
Whittaker, R.J., Ladle, R.J., Arajo, M.B., Fernndez-Palacios, J.M., Delgado, J. and Arvalo,
J.R. (2007) The island immaturity speciation pulse model of island evolution: an
alternative to the diversity begets diversity model. Ecography, 30, 321327. [NB - See
three papers following this one in the same issue, including the reply by Emerson and
Kolm - and see our 2008 Journal of Biogeography paper]
Whittaker, R. J., Triantis, K.A. and Ladle, R.J. (2008) A general dynamic theory of oceanic
island biogeography. Journal of Biogeography, 33, 977-994. DOI:10.1111/j.13652699.2008.01892.x
Whittaker, R.J., Triantis, K.A. and Ladle, R.J. (2010) A general dynamic theory of oceanic
island biogeography: extending the MacArthurWilson theory to accommodate the rise
and fall of volcanic islands. In: The theory of island biogeography at 40: impacts and
prospects, ed. by J. Losos and R.E. Ricklefs, Harvard University Press, Harvard.
R.J.W. 25th January 2012