Island biology: looking towards the future

Kueffer, Christoph; Drake, Donald R.; Fernández‐Palacios, José María

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0719

Cited by 39 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Whereas mainland ecosystems are highly complex, islands may provide simpler ecosystems where the factors that drive variation in diet can be more easily understood (Kueffer, Drake, & Fernandez-Palacios, 2014;Losos & Ricklefs, 2009). First, immigration and emigration are limited on islands.…”

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confidence: 99%

Diet variability among insular populations of Podarcis lizards reveals diverse strategies to face resource‐limited environments

Taverne¹,

Fabre

King‐Gillies³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Access to resources is a dynamic and multicausal process that determines the success and survival of a population. It is therefore often challenging to disentangle the factors affecting ecological traits like diet. Insular habitats provide a good opportunity to study how variation in diet originates, in particular in populations of mesopredators such as lizards. Indeed, high levels of population density associated with low food abundance and low predation are selection pressures typically observed on islands. In the present study, the diet of eighteen insular populations of two closely related species of lacertid lizards (Podarcis sicula and Podarcis melisellensis) was assessed. Our results reveal that despite dietary variability among populations, diet taxonomic diversity is not impacted by island area. In contrast, however, diet disparity metrics, based on the variability in the physical (hardness) and behavioral (evasiveness) properties of ingested food items, are correlated with island size. These findings suggest that an increase in intraspecific competition for access to resources may induce shifts in functional components of the diet. Additionally, the two species differed in the relation between diet disparity and island area suggesting that different strategies exist to deal with low food abundance in these two species. Finally, sexual dimorphism in diet and head dimensions is not greater on smaller islands, in contrast to our predictions.

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confidence: 99%

Diet variability among insular populations of Podarcis lizards reveals diverse strategies to face resource‐limited environments

Taverne¹,

Fabre

King‐Gillies³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Kueffer et al 2014b;Borges et al 2016a;Patiño et al 2017) and montane environments (Huber et al 2006) to answer global questions about biodiversity, environmental change and sustainability (see Appendix S1 for a more detailed list of initiatives).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

et al. 2018

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Islands harbour evolutionary and ecologically unique biota, which are currently disproportionately threatened by a multitude of anthropogenic factors, including habitat loss, 2568 Biodivers Conserv (2018) 27:2567-2586 1 3 invasive species and climate change. Native forests on oceanic islands are important refugia for endemic species, many of which are rare and highly threatened. Long-term monitoring schemes for those biota and ecosystems are urgently needed: (i) to provide quantitative baselines for detecting changes within island ecosystems, (ii) to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation and management actions, and (iii) to identify general ecological patterns and processes using multiple island systems as repeated 'natural experiments'. In this contribution, we call for a Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS) for monitoring the remaining native island forests, using bryophytes, vascular plants, selected groups of arthropods and vertebrates as model taxa. As a basis for the GIMS, we also present new, optimized monitoring protocols for bryophytes and arthropods that were developed based on former standardized inventory protocols. Effective inventorying and monitoring of native island forests will require: (i) permanent plots covering diverse ecological gradients (e.g. elevation, age of terrain, anthropogenic disturbance); (ii) a multiple-taxa approach that is based on standardized and replicable protocols; (iii) a common set of indicator taxa and community properties that are indicative of native island forests' welfare, building on, and harmonized with existing sampling and monitoring efforts; (iv) capacity building and training of local researchers, collaboration and continuous dialogue with local stakeholders; and (v) long-term commitment by funding agencies to maintain a global network of native island forest monitoring plots.

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“…These biota can show new and original specific combinations with subsequent evolution and adaptation [19,20]. All islands must be studied with external references both to relatives of insular taxa and to other terrestrial territories, islands and continents.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin of island biota: Several things in one

Grandcolas

2015

BIO Web of Conferences

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Abstract. Islands can be continental or oceanic. The latter ones, well known as test tubes or natural laboratories, are only colonized by dispersal and their biota are new assemblages of species with subsequent and potentially interesting evolutionary events. Their study however requires considering sophisticated hypotheses of colonization, keeping geological knowledge independent and sampling widely the island regional context.Islands have always been fascinating to people and even the most "terrestrial" persons repeatedly heard about them. Scientists coming to study them were already fed since their childhood with some famous and spirited literature describing islands as refuges for sailors and tramps, territories for social utopia or hidden places for treasures and fights (Stevenson, Defoe, Nordhoff & Hall, Wells, Huxley, Merle, etc.) This social background strongly shaped our way of thinking island biological evolution. Scientists then see islands as remarkable microcosmos and most theories depicting their evolution treat them as systems isolated from other biota with specific processes involving refuges, novel interactions, extinctions or relicts. These recurrent topics or views produced since more than one century and a half of dedicated scientific literature would gain to be disentangled and critically re-analyzed. We must rediscover how many different kinds of islands exist, we must test common and unquestioned postulates about the evolution of their biota, and finally drawn the main critical issues which are in need of study with an appropriate sampling strategy. We could also ask finally whether islands significantly differ from continental biota or are they just workable simple systems? To answer these questions, we have chosen to focus on a few issues that seem to us more important to consider and more amenable to scientific tests.

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Island biology: looking towards the future

Cited by 39 publications

References 23 publications

Diet variability among insular populations of Podarcis lizards reveals diverse strategies to face resource‐limited environments

Diet variability among insular populations of Podarcis lizards reveals diverse strategies to face resource‐limited environments

Global Island Monitoring Scheme (GIMS): a proposal for the long-term coordinated survey and monitoring of native island forest biota

The origin of island biota: Several things in one

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