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19 - The Island Species–Area Relationship: Rosenzweig’s Dinosaur Is Still Alive

from Part V - Future Directions in Species–Area Relationship Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2021

By
Kostas A. Triantis
Edited by
Thomas J. Matthews ,
Kostas A. Triantis  and
Robert J. Whittaker
Thomas J. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Kostas A. Triantis
Affiliation:
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Robert J. Whittaker
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

I am not aware of any other book that has shed so much light on species diversity patterns and generalities across time and space as has M. L. Rosenzweig’s (1995) Species diversity in space and time. Rosenzweig compared the study of species diversity patterns with a dinosaur that has come alive and is challenging us. He then listed 10 major challenges that we as ecologists and biogeographers have to address. Some of these are focused on arguably the most general pattern, and definitely one of the oldest known patterns, in nature, i.e. the species–area relationship (SAR). Rosenzweig, 25 years ago, was signifying that, regardless of the vast number of studies on SARs, we were still lacking, at his time of writing, a complete understanding of the pattern. All of the preceding chapters in this volume highlight the amount of progress that has been made since Rosenzweig’s book, the range of new methods and patterns that have been brought to light and the many new and insightful questions that have been asked; some have been answered, others still challenge us. Herein, I discuss issues related to the SAR that still require our attention, some of which have been noted in the preceding chapters.

Keywords

Species–area relationshipISARislandsspecies–time relationshipsmall-island effectevolutionary ISARcarrying capacityecological space
Type
Chapter
Information
The Species–Area Relationship
Theory and Application
 , pp. 459 - 475
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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