Island Biogeography

Island biogeography is a well-stablished field in Ecology dealing with biodiversity dynamics on islands. Seminal works of McArthur and Wilson led to the development the Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB). This classical theory states that a dynamic equilibrium in species richness is achieved between opposing forces of immigration and extinction processes, where immigration is affected by isolation and exinction by area. The ETIB became one of the most influencial theories in ecology, spawning offshoot fields like landscape ecology, meta-populations and meta-communities, which further provided the theoretical backbone for conservation ecology by integrating edge effects, fragment size and connectivity into the conservation studies. In the last decade, island biogeography gained a new momentum thanks to the development of the General Dynamic Model of Island Biogeography (GDM), led by Robert J. Whittaker and colleagues. In this new theoretical framework, environmental dynamics is explicitly included to account for geomorphological changes on islands over evolutionary temporal scales. The species richness emerges from the interplay between immigration, extinction and speciation, whose influence vary over the island's "life-span", showing a bell shape over time. However, the theoretical consequence of several other mechanisms and drivers influencing island biodiversity remain unexplored, including archipelagic dynamics, rescue effects, target effects, taxon cycle, island hopping and so on. 

In our working group, we thus explore how we can describe biodiversity dynamics on islands based on eco-evolutionary processes at the individual and population levels. We further aim to generalize findings to island-like systems, such as sky islands (isolated mountains in continents).

Current subprojects are:

 1) Eco-evolutionary dynamics on oceanic islands: an individual-, niche-based approach. Performed by former PhD student Ludwig Leidinger and master student Daniel Vedder.

 2) Using East African Zosterops to understand speciation and eco‐evolutionary dynamics in rapidly changing environment. Performed by visiting postdoc Dr. Jan Engler and master student Daniel Vedder.