2015
DOI: 10.1101/025486
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Resurrection of the island rule – human-driven extinctions have obscured a basic evolutionary pattern

Abstract: Islands are or have been occupied by unusual species, such as dwarf proboscideans and giant rodents. The discussion of the classical but controversial “island rule,” which states that mammalian body sizes converge on intermediate sizes on islands, has been stimulated by these unusual species. In this paper, we use an unprecedented global data set of the distributions and the body sizes of mammals and a novel analytical method to analyze body size evolution on islands; the analyses produced strong support for t… Show more

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Cited by 29 publications
(42 citation statements)
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“…We note that the drastically different results of the analyses for southern clades when examining natural versus realized distributions are in accordance with the effects of anthropogenic range contractions and extinctions on analyses of diversity drivers (Faurby & Svenning, 2015a) and body size evolution (Faurby & Svenning, 2016). Hence, the present study provides further evidence that anthropogenic extinctions may bias assessments of the evolutionary and ecological drivers of diversity patterns.…”
Section: Resultssupporting
confidence: 67%
See 1 more Smart Citation
“…We note that the drastically different results of the analyses for southern clades when examining natural versus realized distributions are in accordance with the effects of anthropogenic range contractions and extinctions on analyses of diversity drivers (Faurby & Svenning, 2015a) and body size evolution (Faurby & Svenning, 2016). Hence, the present study provides further evidence that anthropogenic extinctions may bias assessments of the evolutionary and ecological drivers of diversity patterns.…”
Section: Resultssupporting
confidence: 67%
“…Our analyses used the most recent information on mammalian phylogeny and taxonomy (Faurby & Svenning, 2015b) as well as mammalian body sizes (Faurby & Svenning, 2016). We used two distribution databases: (1) estimated present natural (sensu Peterken, 1977) distributions, i.e.…”
Section: Input Datamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…We now use this framework to calculate how the ability of land mammals and great whales to diffuse nutrients away from hotspots may have changed following the widespread extinctions of megafauna and hunting of whales. We estimate the total capability of animals to distribute nutrients both now, with the current International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) species range maps and body mass, and in the past for the now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna, using a dataset of the ranges and body masses of extinct megafauna (48,49). We use the following equation to estimate diffusion capacity (completely described in SI Appendix) based on mass (M) and the scaling parameters of day range (DD), metabolic rate (MR), population density (PD), and food passage time (PR) (this equation differs slightly from our previous formulation by excluding parameters not dependent on animal mass): Φ = MR*PD* ðDD * PRÞ 2 2*PR = 0.78*0.05*M 1.17 .…”
Section: Methodsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…These analyses were conducted on a Behrman projected grid with a column width of 1 degree giving areas of each cell of about 9000 km 2 . Data on distribution and body sizes were taken from Faurby et al (2018) but originally come from multiple sources (Faurby & Svenning 2016;IUCN 2016;Smith et al 2003).…”
Section: Spatial Analysesmentioning
confidence: 99%