Island biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness of isolated natural communities. The theory was developed to explain species richness of actual islands. It has since been extended to mountains surrounded by deserts, lakes surrounded by dry land, fragmented forest and even natural habitats surrounded by human-altered landscapes. Now it is used in reference to any ecosystem surrounded by unlike ecosystems. The field was started in the 1960s by the ecologists Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, who coined the term island biogeography, as this theory attempted to predict the number of species that would exist on a newly created island.
Read more about Island Biogeography: Definitions, Theory, Historical Record, Research Experiments, Applications in Conservation Biology
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“I ... would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parliament, and which late experience has shewn they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)