Predators of Vertebrates on Islands

Abstract

Islands are considered to be natural laboratories forthe study of evolutionary and ecological processes (Gorman 1979, Williamson 1981). One common assumption of insular biogeography is that there are few predators on islands (Carlquist 1965, Sondaar 1977, Wallace 1889, Williamson 1981). Nevertheless, some biologists (e.g., Sondaar 1977) state that what is usually lacking on islands is not predators in general but specifically the mammalian carnivores. In this article, we consider the predators of middle-sized (more than 5 kg; i.e., the European hare) and large-sized vertebrates (more than 40 kg) on oceanic and oceaniclike islands. These islands are characterized by impoverished, unbalanced land faunas, compared with those of the closest continental mainland, and by numerous endemic taxa. The ancestral