Abstract
Sherwin Carlquist's seminal publications-in particular his classic Island Biology, published in 1974-formulated hypotheses specific to island biology that remain valuable today. This special issue brings together some of the most interesting contributions presented at the First Island Biology Symposium hosted in Honolulu on 7-11 July 2014. We compiled a total of 18 contributions that present data from multiple archipelagos across the world and from different disciplines within the plant sciences. In this introductory paper, we first provide a short overview of Carlquist's life and work and then summarize the main findings of the collated papers. A first group of papers deals with issues to which Carlquist notably contributed: long-distance dispersal, adaptive radiation and plant reproductive biology. The findings of such studies demonstrate the extent to which the field has advanced thanks to (i) the increasing availability and richness of island data, covering many taxonomic groups and islands; (ii) new information from the geosciences, phylogenetics and palaeoecology, which allows us a more realistic understanding of the geological and biological development of islands and their biotas; and (iii) the new theoretical and methodological advances that allow us to assess patterns of abundance, diversity and distribution of island biota over large spatial scales. Most other papers in the issue cover a range of topics related to plant conservation on islands, such as causes and consequences of mutualistic disruptions (due to pollinator or disperser losses, introduction of alien predators, etc.). Island biologists are increasingly considering reintroducing ecologically important species to suitable habitats within their historic range and to neighbouring islands with depauperate communities of vertebrate seed dispersers, and an instructive example is given here. Finally, contributions on ecological networks demonstrate the usefulness of this methodological tool to advancing conservation management and better predicting the consequences of disturbances on species and interactions in the fragile insular ecosystems.
Highlights
Introduction to the Special IssueAdvances in island plant biology since Sherwin Carlquist's Island BiologyAuthor(s): Traveset, Anna; Fernández-Palacios, José María; Kueffer, Christoph; Bellingham, Peter J.; Morden, Clifford; Drake, Donald R
The year of the first Island Biology conference coincided with the 40th anniversary of the publication of an outstanding book that inspired a generation of island biologists: Sherwin Carlquist’s Island Biology, published in 1974 by Columbia University Press
It was a strong indication that island biology is flourishing, and given the importance of Sherwin Carlquist’s work across many research fields, it showed that his legacy lives on and grows
Summary
In July 2014, the University of Hawai‘i hosted the First Island Biology Symposium, where nearly 450 island biologists from all over the world and from very different island biology subdisciplines (Island Biogeography, Phylogeography, Ecology, Palaeoecology, Conservation Biology, etc.) joined together for the first time (Kueffer et al 2014). In another study, Vargas, Arjona, Nogales and Heleno (2015) analysed the plant traits that allow long-distance dispersal and their effectiveness These authors performed floristic and syndrome analyses on the native recipient flora of an Atlantic Ocean archipelago (Azores), finding that diplochorous species, i.e. those in which seed dispersal occurs by a sequence of two or more steps or phases, each involving a different dispersal agent, are overrepresented relative to species in mainland Europe, but not when compared with their most likely propagule’s source (mainland Portugal). Historical paintings and photographs during a period of settlement on the Auckland Islands in the mid-19th century show areas of forest clearance and burning, and the authors of this contribution claim that these are the areas where the tree has become locally dominant up to the present
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