{"id":17397,"date":"2020-02-19T21:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/?p=17397"},"modified":"2020-06-09T12:11:06","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T12:11:06","slug":"biologists-uncover-shape-of-fundamental-global-relationships-that-determine-bird-diversity-on-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/biologists-uncover-shape-of-fundamental-global-relationships-that-determine-bird-diversity-on-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"Biologists uncover shape of fundamental global relationships that determine bird diversity on islands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Researchers from the\u00a0Department of Zoology at the\u00a0University of Oxford have contributed to a monumental international study, published today in\u00a0Nature<\/em>,\u00a0that\u00a0has shown what factors determine how many bird species can be found on any given island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study, a collection of molecular data from bird species found across 41 oceanic archipelagos,\u00a0reveals how the area and isolation of islands are key to determining the diversity of species they contain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is\u00a0known\u00a0that biodiversity is unevenly distributed across the planet.\u00a0But why do some islands such as the Gal\u00e1pagos and Hawaii harbour so many unique species of birds? In the 1960’s, Robert MacArthur & Edward Wilson proposed what was to become\u00a0a highly\u00a0influential theory\u00a0in biology: the Theory of Island Biogeography. This theory predicts the number of species expected on any given island as a function of the area (size) of the island and its isolation (distance) from the mainland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarkably, to date no study has shown on a global scale how island area and isolation determine the rates at which species colonise new islands, evolve new types or go extinct. These relationships have remained elusive for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in a new study\u00a0published today in\u00a0Nature<\/em>, a team of ornithologists, evolutionary biologists and mathematical modellers\u00a0have shown\u00a0for the first time how rates of island colonisation, natural extinction, and species formation vary with island size and distance from the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Sonya Clegg, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the Department of Zoology, says:\u00a0\u2018This huge collaborative effort \u2013 led by Dr Luis Valente of\u00a0Museum f\u00fcr Naturkunde\u00a0in\u00a0Berlin\u00a0\u2013\u00a0has allowed us to create this remarkable global dataset of island birds worldwide. This data shows\u00a0that\u00a0indeed,\u00a0colonisation decreases with isolation,\u00a0and\u00a0extinction decreases with area,\u00a0confirming the key components of the Theory of Island Biogeography. Importantly we were able to extend the model framework to include speciation, showing that\u00a0speciation increases with both area and isolation, and furthermore, describe the\u00a0precise shape of these key global biodiversity relationships\u00a0for birds.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A further\u00a0fascinating result was the finding that the vast majority of island bird species represent unique evolutionary branches with no close relatives on the islands they inhabit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Valente of\u00a0Museum f\u00fcr Naturkunde in Berlin, says: \u2018Islands are frequently associated with spectacular radiations\u00a0\u2013\u00a0think\u00a0of\u00a0Darwin\u2019s finches of Gal\u00e1pagos, where a single coloniser went on to diversify into 15 different species\u00a0\u2013 but this is not the evolutionary scenario for most of the world\u2019s island bird\u00a0diversity.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Clegg says:\u00a0\u2018It will be exciting to see how this\u00a0major advance for testing island biology theory on a global scale\u00a0can be applied to other taxa. How will the precise shape of relationships change when looking at ants, or mammals or reptiles? These types of comparisons will answer long-standing questions about biogeographical patterns, and no doubt stimulate new avenues for research.\u2019<\/p>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers from the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford have contributed to a monumental international study, published today in Nature, that has shown what factors determine how many bird species can be found on any given island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biology","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",1024,768,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-200x200.jpg",200,200,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-768x576.jpg",750,563,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",750,563,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",1024,768,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",1024,768,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",1024,768,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",760,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",600,450,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",600,450,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-760x490.jpg",760,490,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-550x360.jpg",550,360,true],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird-95x65.jpg",95,65,true],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",640,480,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/island-bird.jpg",150,113,false]},"author_info":{"info":["RevoScience"]},"category_info":"Biology<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}