Synthesis reveals that island species-area relationships emerge from processes beyond passive sampling

Aim

The Island Species-Area Relationship (ISAR) quantifies how the number of species increases as the area of an island or island-like habitat gets larger, and is one of ecology’s most general patterns. However, studies that measure the ISAR often confound variation in sampling methodology and analyses, precluding appropriate syntheses of its underlying mechanisms. While most ISAR studies only use presence-absence data at the whole-island scale, we aggregated data sets of species-level abundances allowing for individual-based rarefaction.

Location

505 islands from 34 different archipelagos across the world, including oceanic islands, lake islands and forest islands.

Major Taxa Studied

Local assemblages of plants, invertebrates, herpetofauna, birds, mammals