Comparative biogeography of mammals on islands

Lawlor, Timothy E.

doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.1986.tb01751.x

Cited by 122 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Figure 1 shows the fit to Niering's [10] classic plant data; figure 2 shows the fits to the bird [25], herpetofauna [26], invertebrate [27] and mammal [28] datasets with the most data points. The median value of the fitted fundamental biodiversity number u was 3.9; the median fitted immigration parameter m was 1.5 Â 10 25 ; and the median fitted number of niches K was 2.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintenance of biodiversity on islands

et al. 2016

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theory of island biogeography predicts that island species richness should increase with island area. This prediction generally holds among large islands, but among small islands species richness often varies independently of island area, producing the so-called 'small-island effect' and an overall biphasic species -area relationship (SAR). Here, we develop a unified theory that explains the biphasic island SAR. Our theory's key postulate is that as island area increases, the total number of immigrants increases faster than niche diversity. A parsimonious mechanistic model approximating these processes reproduces a biphasic SAR and provides excellent fits to 100 archipelago datasets. In the light of our theory, the biphasic island SAR can be interpreted as arising from a transition from a nichestructured regime on small islands to a colonization-extinction balance regime on large islands. The first regime is characteristic of classic deterministic niche theories; the second regime is characteristic of stochastic theories including the theory of island biogeography and neutral theory. The data furthermore confirm our theory's key prediction that the transition between the two SAR regimes should occur at smaller areas, where immigration is stronger (i.e. for taxa that are better dispersers and for archipelagos that are less isolated).

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintenance of biodiversity on islands

et al. 2016

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“…The simplest explanation is that throughout the Cenozoic the surrounding ocean has exerted a strong filtration effect, making crossings highly improbable -though evidently not impossible, at least from time to time. However, given that mammals in general have succeeded in colonizing remarkably few oceanic islands [Lawlor, 1986], one must also ask how any contrived to cross at all. This applies especially to forms such as Madagascar's primates, which do not appear to be particularly well equipped physiologically to have made this epic voyage [Mzilikazi et al,this vol.,.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Still, this has never been an easy proposition to defend in the case of the island's terrestrial mammals, for creatures of this kind are notoriously poor over-water dispersers [Lawlor, 1986], and adverse ocean currents in the Mozambique Channel have evidently militated against west-east transfer [Stankiewicz et al, 2006]. Still, prior to the advent of plate tectonics, when the basic outlines of world geography were regarded as largely fixed, the only evident means of getting the ancestral Malagasy mammals across the 450-km-wide Mozambique Channel was by means of a 'sweepstakes' route, specifically rafting.…”

Section: Madagascar As An Oceanic Islandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historical Biogeography of the Strepsirhine Primates of Madagascar

Tattersall¹

2006

IJFP

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Lying some 400 km off the coast of southeastern Africa, Madagascar is the world’s largest oceanic island. It has been in roughly the same position relative to its parent continent for 120 million years, and as a consequence its mammal fauna is unusual in composition, with a low number of major taxa but a high diversity at lower taxonomic levels. Among Madagascar’s native terrestrial mammals, only the orders Primates, Rodentia, Carnivora and Insectivora are represented (plus, until recently, the enigmatic and endemic Bibymalagasia, and Artiodactyla in the form of semiaquatic pygmy hippopotamuses). This reflects the fact that terrestrial mammals are notoriously poor over-water dispersers; yet at the same time the ancestors of all of Madagascar’s mammals had to have crossed a wide oceanic barrier to get to the island at various points during the Tertiary. Here I examine the palaeogeographic evidence for potential land bridge or ‘stepping-stone’ connections with adjacent continents from the Mesozoic through the Cenozoic, and review the fossil records and phylogenies of each of Madagascar’s mammalian groups in an attempt to estimate the minimum number of crossings necessary to produce the island’s current faunal composition. Probable monophyletic origins for each major group, and thus a smaller rather than a larger number of crossings of the Mozambique Channel, imply that this water barrier has acted as a powerful filter; so powerful that it is unclear whether any crossings would have been possible without some form of subaerial connection, however ephemeral, at least from time to time during the Tertiary. Clarification of how Madagascar’s terrestrial mammal fauna may have originated is thus as likely to emerge from the geology of the seafloor surrounding the island as it is to come from the fossil record or from the internal and external relationships of its various components.

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“…This model was based upon the generally accepted tenet that terrestrial mammals have low capabilities for dispersal onto islands (Heaney, 1984;Lawlor, 1986), such that their current distributions on continental islands are determined particularly by the historical presence of land bridges to the adjacent land mass (Groves, 1985;Heaney, 1986) and the climatic conditions which prevailed during the lifetime of these connections (Yalden, 1982). The model attempted to Dec.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origin of the Japanese Land Mammal Fauna: Allocation of Extant Species to Historically-based Categories.

1998

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Consideration of the historical development of the mammal fauna on the major Japanese Islands allows six categories of species to be recognised, on the basis of their origins and current geographical distribution within Japan, which are modified from the original seven categories of Dobson (1994). The six categories are clearly defined, but allocation of species within them requires a full understands ing of taxonomic relationships and a good fossil record and is , therefore, tentative for certain species. We here attempt to allocate the recent terrestrial non-flying mammals of Japan to the six categories. In cases where allocation is uncertain, due to a lack of appropriate evidence, we provide our reasoning for decisions made. We have, therefore, been able to highlight gaps in the knowledge of the biogeographical history of the Japanese mammal fauna.

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Comparative biogeography of mammals on islands

Cited by 122 publications

References 40 publications

Maintenance of biodiversity on islands

Maintenance of biodiversity on islands

Historical Biogeography of the Strepsirhine Primates of Madagascar

Origin of the Japanese Land Mammal Fauna: Allocation of Extant Species to Historically-based Categories.

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