Unravelling the small‐island effect through phylogenetic community ecology

Matthews, Thomas J.; Rigal, François; Kougioumoutzis, Konstantinos; Trigas, Panayiotis; Triantis, Kostas A.

doi:10.1111/jbi.13940

Cited by 26 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…When compared to species trait dissimilarities, phylogenetic distances between species can reveal whether traits or common ancestry drive invasion success on islands (Marx et al, 2016). In addition, in the absence of traits, phylogenetic relatedness can be used as proxy for trait similarity and can indicate filtering processes on islands (Matthews et al, 2020).…”

Section: Methodological and Statistical Approaches For Functional Island Biogeographymentioning

confidence: 99%

A roadmap to plant functional island biogeography

et al. 2021

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Island biogeography is the study of the spatio-temporal distribution of species, communities, assemblages or ecosystems on islands and other isolated habitats. Island diversity is structured by five classes of process: dispersal, establishment, biotic interactions, extinction and evolution. Classical approaches in island biogeography focused on species richness as the deterministic outcome of these processes. This has proved fruitful, but species traits can potentially offer new biological insights into the processes by which island life assembles and why some species perform better at colonising and persisting on islands. Functional traits refer to morphological and phenological characteristics of an organism or species that can be linked to its ecological strategy and that scale up from individual plants to properties of communities and ecosystems. A baseline hypothesis is for traits and ecological strategies of island species to show similar patterns as a matched mainland environment. However, strong dispersal, environmental and biotic-interaction filters as well as stochasticity associated with insularity modify this baseline. Clades that do colonise often embark on distinct ecological and evolutionary pathways, some because of distinctive evolutionary forces on islands, and some because of the opportunities offered by freedom from competitors or herbivores or the absence of mutualists. Functional traits are expected to be shaped by these processes. Here, we review and discuss the potential for integrating functional traits into island biogeography. While we focus on plants, the general considerations and concepts may be extended to other groups of organisms. We evaluate how functional traits on islands relate to core principles of species dispersal, establishment, extinction, reproduction, biotic interactions, evolution and conservation. We formulate existing knowledge as 33 working hypotheses. Some of these are grounded on firm empirical evidence, others provide opportunities for future research. We organise our hypotheses under five overarching sections. Section A focuses on plant functional traits enabling species dispersal to islands. Section B discusses how traits help to predict species establishment, successional trajectories and natural extinctions on islands. Section C reviews how traits indicate species biotic interactions and reproduction strategies and which traits promote intra-island dispersal. Section D discusses how evolution on islands leads to predictable changes in trait values and which traits are most susceptible to change. Section E debates how functional ecology can be used to study multiple drivers of global change on islands and to formulate effective conservation measures. Islands have a justified reputation as research models. They illuminate the forces operating within mainland communities by showing what happens when those forces are released or changed. We believe that the lens of functional ecology can shed more light on these forces than research approaches that do not conside...

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Section: Methodological and Statistical Approaches For Functional Island Biogeographymentioning

confidence: 99%

A roadmap to plant functional island biogeography

et al. 2021

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“…The new functions for the piecewise models will be published on CRAN, but are currently available on GitHub and can be installed in R using the command: devtools::install_github("txm676/sars", ref ="thresholds_2"). See also for Matthews et al (2020) for further details on the fitting procedure).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of ecological specialization in shaping patterns of insular communities

Sfenthourakis

Triantis

Πρόιος

et al. 2020

Journal of Biogeography

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Aim Research on the response of species richness to area and environmental heterogeneity so far has not addressed possible effects of species’ differences in ecological specialization. Herein we provide a new metric, ‘ecorichness’, in an attempt to fill this gap. Location Aegean islands (Greece). Taxon Terrestrial isopods. Methods ‘Ecorichness’ estimates an island's biodiversity by integrating species richness and the specialists‐generalists spectrum. We calculated ‘ecorichness’ for terrestrial isopods from 43 Aegean islands based on the habitats they exploit. ‘Ecorichness’ then was regressed on area, habitat diversity and the K‐parameter of the Choros model using linear and quadratic models, compared based on AICc. A reduced data set, without halophilous species and coastal habitats, as well as an alternative description of habitat diversity, also was explored. The small island effect (SIE) thresholds identified using both a path analysis approach and piecewise continuous linear models were compared to the area of maximum ‘ecorichness’. Results ‘Ecorichness’ response to area and habitat heterogeneity was best fitted by quadratic models with peaks located at an area similar to the SIE threshold identified by path analysis. Different measures of habitat diversity produced similar patterns. Exclusion of coastal species and habitats shows that the response of ‘ecorichness’ to area is mostly shaped by the increasing contribution of specialists in the assemblages of larger islands. Main conclusions ‘Ecorichness’ facilitates exploration of the role of ecological specialization in shaping community patterns. It can be applied to different community data sets, whenever habitat range exploitation can be quantified. Results from the case study accord with previous suggestions that the relative contribution of generalists and specialists differs between small and large island communities.

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“…In this study, we conducted the first global synthesis to systematically compare the prevalence and underlying variables determining the occurrence of SIEs and area thresholds between amphibians and reptiles. Identifying the underlying variables driving the SIE pattern and area thresholds is important from both a fundamental ecological and conservational perspective (Lomolino and Weiser 2001, Wang et al 2018, Matthews et al 2020. We found evidence for SIEs in 55 out of 105 global island data sets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…To test for the existence of a SIE, instead of using discontinuous models whose ecological logic has been questioned (Matthews et al 2020, Yu et al 2020, we used six continuous piecewise regression models (Eq. 1-6; Fig.…”

Section: Detection Of the Siementioning

confidence: 99%

A global synthesis of the small‐island effect in amphibians and reptiles

Gao

Wang

2021

Ecography

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The small‐island effect (SIE) is an important pattern in the research fields of island biogeography and biodiversity science. Amphibians and reptiles, while playing important roles in ecosystems, are experiencing global declines. However, to date, no study has explicitly examined the generality and processes underlying the SIE in amphibians and reptiles. Here, we complied 105 global data sets to systematically evaluate the prevalence and underlying factors determining the occurrence of SIEs, area threshold (T) and difference in area threshold (ΔT) between amphibians and reptiles. We applied 27 species–area relationship (SAR) models to the 105 global data sets of amphibians and reptiles to test for the existence of SIEs. We obtained 12 island characteristics, 5 environmental variables, 2 anthropogenic influence variables and 8 species traits that are linked to species survival, which were then tested separately and in combination to examine their roles in determining the occurrence of SIEs, area threshold and ΔT between amphibians and reptiles. We found SIEs in 20 out of 45 (44%) archipelagos for amphibians and 35 out of 60 (58%) archipelagos for reptiles. The occurrence of SIEs was affected by the number of islands, mean annual precipitation and minimum range size for amphibians, whereas only by the number of islands for reptiles. Area thresholds of amphibians were significantly higher than those of reptiles within the same true island system. Area thresholds were affected by mean island area and mean annual temperature for amphibians, whereas by mean island area, temperature seasonality and minimum range size for reptiles. ΔT was affected only by island type. Our study demonstrates that the determinants of the occurrence of SIEs and area thresholds comprised both extrinsic and intrinsic variables but differed substantially between amphibians and reptiles.

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Unravelling the small‐island effect through phylogenetic community ecology

Cited by 26 publications

References 55 publications

A roadmap to plant functional island biogeography

A roadmap to plant functional island biogeography

The role of ecological specialization in shaping patterns of insular communities

A global synthesis of the small‐island effect in amphibians and reptiles

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