One thing it is important to remember about Island Biogeography was that it was a very simple model that showed the relationship between island size and distance from a species source, i.e. a mainland. This model works well at a basic level because MacArthur and Wilson were both very bright, but they were also in the generation of Biologists suffering from Physics envy, so they were seeking fundamental laws in Biology that were the equivalent of gravity, acceleration, and momentum.

The problem is Biology is not physics and does not lend itself to simple explanations. Species are not simple entities that can be randomly assembled and coexist without interaction. The real issue is that the theoretical ecologists of the 60's and 70's, wanted living populations to coexist like billiard balls on a table, whereas we now know so much more about species dynamics, although there are still these simplistic models floating around that are sort of like myths, i.e. they provide insight but can never describe true reality. In today's world you need to move past simple Island Biogeography and into the dynamics imposed by cooperation and niche construction to begin to understand species dynamics.

If you want a basic review a careful read of MacArthur and Wilson is the place to start, and probably end. It depends on whether you are a modeler or an ecologist in your approach. MacArthur was the best at basic models, with Bob May being the only one close, however May was trained as a physicist rather than as a Biologist. I would read MacArthur's final book Geographical Ecology to try and understand what MacArthur thought at the end of his too-short life (he died at 42). He also presents a very good deconstruction of r and K theory, and where it went off the tracks in that book.

The best model is general additive model, where you can keep adding variables to make the model more realistic :)

There is an excellent review of this topic published in 2021. It is -

Matthews, Thomas J., Triantis, Kostas A. and Whittaker, Robert J. (editors).

The Species-Area Relationship: theory and application. Cambridge University Press.

This book is available in hard copy, Paper copy and e-version. In its 481 pages, 19 chapters, 44 contributors, it explores the ramifications of many aspects of the species-area relationship. I am sure that you will find this extremely useful.

I'll echo Pierotti's comments to add that the question 'why bother'. Its just a made up recipe. For some reason, scientists like recipes. Perhaps so they do not have to think. What is missing from so-called island biogeography models is the reality of history that affects composition. For example, the model ignores local survival as metapopulations on multiple former islands in a region now occupied by a 'recent' island, as if everything came from outside the region when it did not. And it ignores processes such as mobile island arcs, magmatic plateaus, sunken continents with local survival on volcanic islands (Indian Ocean has some good examples). Island biogeography might be good for assessing weeds in your garden, but perhaps little else, at least not on an evolutionary timescale.

The article "Heads, M. & Grehan, J.R. 2021. The Galápagos Islands: biogeographic patterns and geology. Biological Reviews 96: 1160-1185."

shows how island biogeography models are irrelevant to reality. Scientists should stick to reality, even if there are no recipes available. Bake a better cake :)

Cannot upload a copy, but can be requested via ResearchGate as a private copy.

Hi.

I suggest reading the next books about island biogeography, which are scholarly and modern references about the matter:

WHITTAKER, R. J. & J. M. FERNÁNDEZ-PALACIOS (2007). Island Biogeography. Second Edition. Oxford University Press. Oxford. XII + 401 pp. + table.

WHITTAKER, R. J., J. M, FERNÁNDEZ-PALACIOS & T. J. MATTHEWS (2023). Island Biogeography. Geo-environmental dynamics, ecology, evolution, human impact, and conservation. Oxford University Press. Oxford. XV + 475 pp.

Best regards, and good luck in your research.

Hi, my recommendations are:

Fernández‐Palacios, J. M., Rijsdijk, K. F., Norder, S. J., Otto, R., Nascimento, L., Fernández‐Lugo, S., Tjørve, E., & Whittaker, R. J. (2015). Towards a glacial‐sensitive model of island biogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 25(7), 817-830. https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12320

Whittaker, R. J., Fernández-Palacios, J. M., Matthews, T. J., Borregaard, M. K., & Triantis, K. A. (2017). Island biogeography: Taking the long view of nature’s laboratories. Science, 357(6354), Article 6354. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam8326

Nice recommendations. The 2017 paper is an excellent example of the muddled thinking dominating island biogeography. The paper is a propaganda piece (as are most reviews in science) propping up the center of origin dispersalist machinary that provide the essential underpiiinngs of respectibility. Below some brief comments (could do more, but no time).

"Although most of New Zealand’s biota appears to owe its origins to dispersal"

Absolute fiction. No such evidence exists. All made up.

"A classic insular syndrome is the loss of dispersability of formerly dispersive species following island colonization”

One can get the same result when a continent sinks, leaving only volcanic outcrops. So called 'dispersability' has not much to do with anything.

"also been inferred that many species of plants lacking specialized dispersal adaptations can colonize quite remote islands, often by nonstandard means of transport"

Or they were already there in the first place – before the current islands. And were there (as ancestors) at the same time they were on continents.

" For example, it has recently been shown that the oldest Azorean island, Santa Maria, which first emerged 6 million years ago, initially subsided to form a guyot (a submerged island), before reemerging during the last 3.5 million years"

Classic inference that endemics must come from somewhere else, as if there were no possibility of any subaerial continuity.

"as an island progression rule, of colonization from older to younger islands, with subsequent evolutionary divergence"

Hennig's progression rule is pure fiction. Phylogenetic sequence can also represent sequential vicariance. With island sequence, one my get conforming patterns of island age, and they other taxa that do the opposite,

"The occurrence of endemics older than the island, detected in a number of lineages and archipelagos, is consistent with the long-term operation of the dynamics inferred in Fig. 3, A and B, and in cases”

OK – here is the admission that something else might be involved, but there is no elaboration. Long term operation of the dynamics may apply to persistence (metapopulation survival), but not origin of endemism.

"may indicate very long-term persistence of insular lineages across a network of islands [compare"

Right, but how did the ancestor’s come to be there in the first place? They cite work by Heads and myself, but with no explanation. The cite my work on Macaronesia showing how vicariance works for the region and how ancestors may have 'colonized' ancestral islands AT THE SAME TIME THEY colonized continental areas.

“the ubiquity of that model has been challenged by phylogenies that indicate cases of back-colonization within archipelagos and from islands to mainlands, as well as island hopping across extensive ocean basins"

All fiction. Hennigs progression rule fantasy

"Genetic analyses of Macaronesian bryophytes, for example, support de novo foundation of continental populations from insular ancestors, indicating that the islands of Macaronesia have provided stepping-stones for transoceanic movement linked to long-term westerly atmospheric

circulation"

Good example of selective memory loss. Cites my work on vicariance and then ingores it to make the same assertions. No genetic analysis gives any empirical support for such conjectures.

"Even more startling is the claim, again from molecular phylogenetic studies, that the uplift and formation of the Wallacean archipelago triggered the global radiation and expansion of all songbirds “

Yeah – might be startling, but pure fantasy.

That's the gist of it. Anyone finds fault with any of the above, feel free to argue the point.

Cheers, John

Many thanks to all of you for the highly valuable suggestions!