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Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology

Island Biogeography

Summary

Island biogeography is a well-stablished field in Ecology dealing with biodiversity dynamics on islands. Seminal works of McArthur and Wilson led to the development the Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB). This classical theory states that a dynamic equilibrium in species richness is achieved between opposing forces of immigration and extinction processes, where immigration is affected by isolation and exinction by area. The ETIB became one of the most influencial theories in ecology, spawning offshoot fields like landscape ecology, meta-populations and meta-communities, which further provided the theoretical backbone for conservation ecology by integrating edge effects, fragment size and connectivity into the conservation studies. In the last decade, island biogeography gained a new momentum thanks to the development of the General Dynamic Model of Island Biogeography (GDM), led by Robert J. Whittaker and colleagues. In this new theoretical framework, environmental dynamics is explicitly included to account for geomorphological changes on islands over evolutionary temporal scales. The species richness emerges from the interplay between immigration, extinction and speciation, whose influence vary over the island's "life-span", showing a bell shape over time. However, the theoretical consequence of several other mechanisms and drivers influencing island biodiversity remain unexplored, including archipelagic dynamics, rescue effects, target effects, taxon cycle, island hopping and so on. 

In our working group, we thus explore how we can describe biodiversity dynamics on islands based on eco-evolutionary processes at the individual and population levels. We further aim to generalize findings to island-like systems, such as sky islands (isolated mountains in continents).

Details

Current subprojects are:

 1) Eco-evolutionary dynamics on oceanic islands: an individual-, niche-based approach. Performed by former PhD student Ludwig Leidinger and master student Daniel Vedder.

 2) Using East African Zosterops to understand speciation and eco‐evolutionary dynamics in rapidly changing environment. Performed by visiting postdoc Dr. Jan Engler and master student Daniel Vedder.

People in this project

Publications

2021[ to top ]
  • Propagule pressure and an invasion syndrome determine invasion success in a plant community model Vedder, Daniel; Leidinger, Ludwig; Sarmento Cabral, Juliano in Ecology and Evolution (2021). 11 17106–17116.
2020[ to top ]
  • The effect of species extinctions on island biogeographic patterns Matthews, Tom; Leidinger, Ludwig; Cabral, Juliano in Ecological Research (2020). 35 372–381.
2019[ to top ]
  • Interactions between ecological, evolutionary, and environmental processes unveil complex dynamics of insular plant diversity Cabral, J.S.; Wiegand, K.; Kreft, H. in Journal of Biogeography (2019). 46 1582–1597.
  • Assessing predicted isolation effects from the general dynamic model of island biogeography with an eco-evolutionary model for plants Cabral, J.S.; Whittaker, R.J.; Wiegand, K.; Kreft, H. in Journal of Biogeography (2019). 46 1569–1581.
2018[ to top ]
  • Spatial scaling of extinction rates: theory and data reveal non-linearity, and a major upscaling and downscaling challenge Keil, P.; Pereira, H.M.; Cabral, J.S.; Chase, J.; May, F.; Martins, I.S.; Winter, M. in Global Ecology and Biogeography (2018). 27 2–13.
2017[ to top ]
  • Oceanic island biogeography through the lens of the general dynamic model: assessment and prospect Borregaard, Michael K.; Amorim, Isabel R.; Borges, Paulo A. V.; Cabral, Juliano S.; Fernández-Palacios, José M.; Field, Richard; Heaney, Lawrence R.; Kreft, Holger; Matthews, Thomas J.; Olesen, Jens M.; Price, Jonathan; Rigal, Francois; Steinbauer, Manuel J.; Triantis, Konstantinos A.; Valente, Luis; Weigelt, Patrick; Whittaker, Robert J. in Biological Reviews (2017). 92 830–853.
  • Interactions between ecological, evolutionary, and environmental processes unveil complex dynamics of island biodiversity Cabral, J.S.; Wiegand, K.; Kreft, H. in bioRxiv (2017). (099978)
  • Effects of time and isolation on plant diversity: testing island biogeography theory with an eco-evolutionary model Cabral, J.S.; Whittaker, R.J.; Wiegand, K.; Kreft, H. in bioRxiv (2017). (100289)
  • Biodiversity dynamics on islands: explicitly accounting for causality in mechanistic models Leidinger, Ludwig; Cabral, Juliano Sarmento in Diversity (2017). 9(30)
2016[ to top ]
  • Late Quaternary climate change shapes island biodiversity Weigelt, Patrick; Steinbauer, Manuel Jonas; Cabral, Juliano Sarmento; Kreft, Holger in Nature (2016). 532(7597) 99–102.
2014[ to top ]
  • Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect α-, β- and γ-diversities on oceanic archipelagos Cabral, Juliano Sarmento; Weigelt, Patrick; Kissling, W. Daniel; Kreft, Holger in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences (2014). 281(1784)