Founder Effect - Founder Effects in Island Ecology

Founder Effects in Island Ecology

Founder populations are essential to the study of island biogeography and island ecology. A natural "blank slate" is not easily found, but a classic series of studies on founder population effects were done following the catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which erased all life on the island. Another continuing study has been following the biocolonization of Surtsey, Iceland, a new volcanic island that erupted offshore between 1963 and 1967. An earlier event, the Toba eruption in Sumatra of about 73,000 YBP, covered some parts of India with 3–6 metres (9.8–20 ft) of ash, and must have coated the Nicobar Islands and Andaman Islands, much nearer in the ash fallout cone, with life-smothering layers, forcing the restart of their biodiversity from zero.

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    Hail, hail, plump paunch, O the founder of taste
    For fresh meats, or powdered, or pickle, or paste;
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    And emptier of cups, be they even or odd;
    All which have now made thee so wide i’ the waist
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    Thou break’st all thy girdles, and break’st forth a god.
    Ben Jonson (1572–1637)

    The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.
    Adam Smith (1723–1790)

    I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    ... the fundamental principles of ecology govern our lives wherever we live, and ... we must wake up to this fact or be lost.
    Karin Sheldon (b. c. 1945)