Islands have been used as natural laboratories since Darwins studies in the Galapagos. Their discrete, isolated nature, small size and simplified biotas provide excellent opportunities to study evolutionary and ecological patterns. Island biogeography is a truly interdisciplinary field involving a diverse array of theoretical, physical and applied disciplines such as modelling, plant ecology, animal ecology, taxonomy, geography, geology and conservation biology.

​

Objectives:

This course introduces the field of island biogeography, a discipline that has long influenced other research areas such as macroecology, community ecology, evolution and conservation biology. This course covers the main aspects of island biogeography, and on completion of the course the students shall have acquired knowledge and understanding on:

​

1) Ecological/evolutionary theories developed from studies on islands, and its applications in other research areas.

2) Processes that occur during and after island colonization, that shape island community characteristics.

3) Island evolutionary processes.

4) Applications of island biogeography to conservation biology.

​

Teachers: Ana M. C. Santos (coordinator; UAH, Madrid), Joaquín Hortal (MNCN, Madrid), Luis Borda-de-Água (CIBIO, Lisbon) and Sofia Gabriel (CESAM, Lisbon).

​

Calendar: 21 - 24 January 2019

Schedule: Duration: 30 hours

21st January: 9:00 -13:00 and 14:00-17:30

22nd January: 9:00 -13:00 and 14:00-17:30

23rd January: 9:00 -13:00 and 14:00-17:30

24th January: 9:00 -13:00 and 14:00-17:30

 

Location:

The course will take place at the Faculty of Sciences (FCUL) in the Campus of the University of Lisbon, room 2.3.37 (building C2).

 

 

General Plan:

​

Day I (21st January 2019):

ROOM: 2.3.37 (Building C2)

​

1. Introduction to island biogeography: historical context, types of islands, characteristics of island biodiversity (Ana MC Santos) - MORNING

Paper of interest:

Fernández-Palacios JM, De Nascimento L, Otto R, Delgado JD, García-del-Rey E, Arévalo JR, et al. (2011) A reconstruction of Palaeo-Macaronesia, with particular reference to the long-term biogeography of the Atlantic island laurel forests. Journal of Biogeography, 38, 226-246.

​

2. Ecological processes I - Equilibrium theory of island biogeography, species-area relationship (Ana MC Santos) - AFTERNOON

Link for the equilibrium model: http://www.8ballmediadesign.com/images/portfolio/biology/species_equilibrium.html

Papers of interest:

Whittaker, R.J., Triantis, K.A. & Ladle, R.J. (2008) A general dynamic theory of oceanic island biogeography. Journal of Biogeography 35, 977994.

Weigelt, P., Steinbauer, M.J., Sarmento Cabral, J. & Kreft, H. (2016) Late Quaternary climate change shapes island biodiversity. Nature, 532, 99-102.

​

Depending on the time available, we might eventually do some practical exercises on the species-area relationship and the GDM (in R). Please be sure you have installed R (or R studio - https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/) and install packages MuMIn, nlme, corrplot; you can type install.packages("MuMIn"), and do the same for the other packages by replacing the package name).

​

​Day II (22nd January 2019):

ROOM: 2.3.37 (Building C2)

​

3. Ecological processes II - Metapopulation ecology, theoretical models in island biogeography (Joaquin Hortal) - MORNING

​

4. Island Communities - colonization, assemblage characteristics, assembly processes, succession (Ana MC Santos) - AFTERNOON.

Papers of interest:

i) Rosindell, J. & Phillimore, A.B. (2011) A unified model of island biogeography sheds light on the zone of radiation. Ecology Letters, 14, 552-560.

ii) Olesen JM, Eskildsen LI, Venkatasamy S (2002) Invasion of pollination networks on oceanic islands: importance of invader complexes and endemic super generalists. Diversity and Distributions 8, 181-192.

iii) Meiri S (2007) Size evolution in island lizards. Global Ecology and Biogeography 16, 702-708.

​

Day III (23rd January 2019):

ROOM: 2.3.37 (Building C2)

​

5. Ecological processes III - Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography (Luis Borda de Água) - MORNING

​

​6. Evolution on islands - speciation, evolutionary models, adaptive radiation, phylogeography (Ana MC Santos) - AFTERNOON

Paper of interest:

Givnish TJ, Millam KC, Mast AR, Paterson TB, Theim TJ, Hipp AL, et al. (2009). Origin, adaptive radiation and diversification of the Hawaiian lobeliads (Asterales: Campanulaceae). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276, 407-416.

​

Day IV (22nd December 2016):

ROOM: 4.2.07 (Building C4)7.

 

7. Case Studies: (i) Community Assembly on islands (Ana M C Santos) & (ii) Evolutionary processes on islands (Sofia Gabriel) - MORNING

 

8. Island biogeography and Conservation biology - theory of island biogeography and conservation, reserve design, human impacts (Ana MC Santos)- AFTERNOON.

Papers of interest:

i) Triantis KA, Borges PAV, Ladle RJ, Hortal J, Cardoso P, Gaspar C, et al. (2010) Extinction debt on oceanic islands. Ecography, 33, 285-294.

ii) Grelle CEV, Alves MAS, Bergallo HG, Geise L, Rocha CFD, Van Sluys M, et al. (2005) Prediction of threatened tetrapods based on the species–area relationship in Atlantic Forest, Brazil. Journal of Zoology 265, 359–364

​​​

​

Further reading:

Beck, J., Kitching, I.J., Linsenmair, K.E. (2006) Wallace´s line revisited: has vicariance or dispersal shaped the distribution of Malesian hawkmoths (Lepidoptera: Sphingidae)? Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 89, 455-468.

Borges, P.A.V. & Hortal, J. (2009) Time, area and isolation: factors driving the diversification of Azorean arthropods. Journal of Biogeography, 36, 178-191.

Borregaard, M.K., Amorim, I.R., Borges, P.A.V., Cabral, J.S., Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Field, R., Heaney, L.R., Kreft, H., Matthews, T.J., Olesen, J.M., Price, J., Rigal, F., Steinbauer, M.J., Triantis, K.A., Valente, L., Weigelt, P. & Whittaker, R.J. (in press) Oceanic island biogeography through the lens of the general dynamic model: assessment and prospect. Biological Reviews, n/a-n/a.

Carine, M.A., Russell, S.J., Santos-Guerra, A. & Francisco-Ortega, J. (2004) Relationships of the macaronesian and mediterranean floras: Molecular evidence for multiple colonizations into Macaronesia and back-colonization of the continent in Convolvulus (Convolvulaceae). American Journal of Botany, 91, 1070-1085.

Caujapé-Castells, J., Tye, A., Crawford, D.J., Santos-Guerra, A., Sakai, A., Beaver, K., Lobin, W., Vincent Florens, F.B., Moura, M., Jardim, R., Gómes, I. & Kueffer, C. (2010) Conservation of oceanic island floras: present and future global challenges. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, 12, 107129.

Diamond, J.M. (1970) Ecological consequences of island colonization by southwest pacific birds, I. Types of niche shifts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 67, 529-536.

Diamond, J.M. (1974) Colonization of exploded volcanic islands by birds: the supertramp strategy. Science, 184, 803-806.

Diamond, J.M. (1981) Flightlessness and fear of flying in island species. Nature, 293, 507-508.

Emerson, B.C. (2002) Evolution on oceanic islands: molecular phylogenetic approaches to understanding pattern and process. Molecular Ecology, 11, 951-966.

Faurby, S. & S. Jens-Christian (2016) Resurrection of the island rule: human-driven extinctions have obscured a basic evolutionary pattern. The American Naturalist .

Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Rijsdijk, K.F., Norder, S.J., Otto, R., de Nascimento, L., Fernández-Lugo, S., Tjørve, E. & Whittaker, R.J. (2016) Towards a glacial-sensitive model of island biogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 25, 817-830.

Gillespie, R. (2004) Community assembly through adaptative radiation in Hawaiian spiders. Science, 303, 356-359.

Gillespie, R. & Roderick, G. (2014). Evolution: geology and climate drive diversification. Nature, 509, 297–298.

Gravel, D., Massol, F., Canard, E., Mouillot, D. & Mouquet, N. (2011) Trophic theory of island biogeography. Ecology Letters, 14, 1010-1016.

Hortal, J., Triantis, K.A., Meiri, S., Thébault, E. & Sfenthourakis, S. (2009) Island species richness increases with habitat diversity. American Naturalist, 173, E205E217.

Hubbell, S.P. (2001) The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Kim, S.-C., McGowen, M.R., Lubinsky, P., Barber, J.C., Mort, M.E. & Santos-Guerra, A. (2008). Timing and tempo of early and successive adaptive radiations in Macaronesia. PLoS ONE, 3, e2139.

Lavin, M., Wojciechowski, M.F., Richman, A., Rotella, J., Sanderson, M.J. & Matos, A.B. (2001) Identifying tertiary radiations of Fabaceae in the Greater Antilles: alternatives to cladistic vicariance analysis. International Journal of Plant Sciences, 162, S53-S76.

Lawlor, T.E. (1986) Comparative biogegraphy of mammals on islands. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 28, 99-125.

Lomolino, M.V. (2000) A species-based theory of insular zoogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 9, 39-58.

Losos, J.B. & De Queiroz, K. (1997) Evolutionary consequences of ecological release in Caribbean Anolis lizards. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 61, 459483.

Losos, J.B., Jackman, T.R., Larson, A., De Queiroz, K. & Rodríguez-Schettino, L. (1998) Contingency and determinism in replicated adaptive radiations of island lizards. Science, 279, 2115-2118.

Losos, J.B. & Schluter, D. (2000) Analysis of an evolutionary species-area relationship. Nature, 408, 847-850.

Losos, J.B. & Ricklefs, R.E. (2009) Adaptation and diversification on islands. Nature, 457, 830-836.

Losos, J.B. (2010) Adaptive radiation, ecological opportunity, and evolutionary determinism. American Naturalist, 175, 623-639.

Macarthur, R.H., Diamond, J.M. & Karr, J.R. (1972) Density compensation in island faunas. Ecology, 53, 330-342.

Macarthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1963) An equilibrium theory of insular zoogeography. Evolution, 17, 373-387.

Macarthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1967) The theory of island biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

Olesen, J.M. & Valido, A. (2003) Lizards as pollinators and seed dispersers: an island phenomenon. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18, 177-181.

Patiño, J., Carine, M.A., Mardulyn, P., Devos, N., Mateo, R.G., González-Mancebo, J.M., Shaw, A.J. & Vanderpoorten, A. (2015) Approximate Bayesian computation reveals the crucial role of oceanic islands for the assembly of continental biodiversity. Systematic Biology, 64, 579-589.

Rabosky, D.L. & Glor, R.E. (2010). Equilibrium speciation dynamics in a model adaptive radiation of island lizards. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 107, 22178–22183.

Ricklefs, R.E. & Bermingham, E. (2002) The concept of the taxon cycle in biogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 353-361.

Ricklefs, R. & Bermingham, E. (2008) The West Indies as a laboratory of biogeography and evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B - Biological Sciences, 363, 2393-2413.

Ricklefs, R.E. (2010) Colonization of the Lesser Antilles by land birds. Ecology, 91, 1811-1821.

Roderick, G.K. & Gillespie, R.G. (1998) Speciation and phylogeography of Hawaiian terrestrial arthropods. Molecular Ecology, 7, 519-531.

Rosindell, J. & Phillimore, A.B. (2011) A unified model of island biogeography sheds light on the zone of radiation. Ecology Letters, 14, 552-560.

Rosindell, J. & Harmon, L.J. (2013) A unified model of species immigration, extinction and abundance on islands. Journal of Biogeography 40(6), 1107-1118.

Santos, A.M.C., Cianciaruso, M.V. & De Marco, P. (2016) Global patterns of functional diversity and assemblage structure of island parasitoid faunas. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 25, 869–879.

Santos, A.M.C., Colin, F., Quicke, D., Borges, P.A.V. & Hortal, J. (2011). Are island and mainland biotas different? Richness and level of generalism in parasitoids of a microlepidopteran in Macaronesia. Oikos, 120 (8), 1256-1262.

Santos, A.M.C., Field, R. & Ricklefs, R.E. (2016) New directions in island biogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 25, 751-768.

Santos, A.M.C., Whittaker, R.J., Triantis, K.A., Borges, P.A.V., Jones, O.R., Quicke, D.L.J. & Hortal, J. (2010) Are species-area relationships from entire archipelagos congruent with those of their constituent islands? Global Ecology & Biogeography, 19, 527-540.

Savolainen, V., Anstett, M.-C., Lexer, C., Hutton, I., Clarkson, J.J., Norup, M.V., Powell, M.P., Springate, D., Salamin, N. & Baker, W.J. (2006) Sympatric speciation in palms on an oceanic island. Nature, 441, 210-213.

Schluter, D. (1988) Character displacement and the adaptive divergence of finches on islands and continents. American Naturalist, 131, 799-824.

Simberloff, D. (1976) Experimental zoogeography of islands: Effects of island size. Ecology, 57, 629-648.

Sobral, F. L., A. C. Lees, et al. (2016) Introductions do not compensate for functional and phylogenetic losses following extinctions in insular bird assemblages. Ecology Letters, 19, 1091-1100.

Triantis, K.A., Mylonas, M., Lika, K. & Vardinoyannis, K. (2003) A model for the species-area-habitat relationship. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 19-27.

Triantis, K.A., Borges, P.A.V., Ladle, R.J., Hortal, J., Cardoso, P., Gaspar ,C. et al. (2010) Extinction debt on oceanic islands. Ecography, 33, 285-294.

Triantis, K.A. & Bhagwat, S. (2011) Applied Island Biogeography. In: Whittaker RJ, Ladle RJ(eds.) Conservation Biogeography. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Triantis, K.A., Guilhaumon, F. & Whittaker, R.J. (2012). The island species-area relationship: biology and statistics. Journal of Biogeography, 39, 215-231.

Valente, L.M., Etienne, R.S. & Philimore, A.B. (2014) The effects of island ontogeny on species diversity and phylogeny. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 281, 20133227.

Valente, L.M., Phillimore, A. & Etienne, R.S. (in press). Equilibrium and non-equilibrium dynamics simultaneously operate in the Galápagos islands. Ecology Letters, doi/10.1111/ele.12461.

Warren BH, Simberloff D, Ricklefs RE, Aguilée R, Condamine FL, Gillespie RG, Gravel D, Morlon H, Mouquet N, Rosindell J, Casquet J, Conti E, Cornuault J, Fernández-Palacios JM, Hengl T, Norder SJ, Rijsdijk KF, Sanmartín I, Strasberg D, Triantis K, Valente LM, Whittaker RJ, Emerson BC & Thébaud C. (2015). Islands as model systems in ecology and evolution : progress and prospects fifty years after MacArthur-Wilson. Ecology Letters.18, 200-217.

Weigelt, P., Steinbauer, M.J., Sarmento Cabral, J. & Kreft, H. (2016) Late Quaternary climate change shapes island biodiversity. Nature, 532, 99-102.

Weigelt, P., Jetz, W. & Kreft, H. (2013) Bioclimatic and physical characterization of the world's islands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(38), 15307–15312.

Wetzel, F.T., Daniel Kissling, W., Beissmann, H. & Penn, D.J. (2012) Future climate change driven sea-level rise: secondary consequences from human displacement for island biodiversity. Global Change Biology 18(9), 2707-2719.

Whittaker, R.J. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2007) Island biogeography: Ecology, evolution, and conservation, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Wilson, E.O. (1961) The nature of the taxon cycle in the Melanesian ant fauna. American Naturalist, 95, 169-19