Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T22:55:39.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A reappraisal of the role of humans in the biotic disturbance of islands

Part of: Humans and Island Environments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2017

JUAN D. DELGADO ,
RODRIGO RIERA ,
RICARDO A. RODRÍGUEZ ,
PABLO GONZÁLEZ-MORENO  and
JOSÉ MARÍA FERNÁNDEZ-PALACIOS
JUAN D. DELGADO*
Affiliation:
Department of Physical, Chemical and Natural Systems, Ecology Area, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, E-41013 Sevilla, Spain
RODRIGO RIERA
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigaciones Medioambientales del Atlántico (CIMA SL), 38107 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
RICARDO A. RODRÍGUEZ
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, USA
PABLO GONZÁLEZ-MORENO
Affiliation:
Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International, Egham, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, UK
JOSÉ MARÍA FERNÁNDEZ-PALACIOS
Affiliation:
Island Ecology and Biogeography Research Group, Instituto Universitario de Enfermedades Tropicales y Salud Pública de Canarias (IUETSPC), Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, Canary Islands, 38206Spain
*
*Correspondence: Prof Juan D. Delgado e-mail: jddelgar@upo.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Traditionally, islands have been used as ecological and biogeographical models because of their assumed ecological simplicity, reduced ecosystem size and isolation. The vast number of Earth's oceanic islands play a key role in maintaining global biodiversity and serve as a rich source of evolutionary novelty. Research into the factors determining diversity patterns on islands must disentangle natural phenomena from anthropogenic causes of habitat transformation, interruption and enhancement of biological fluxes and species losses and gains in these geographically and ecologically limited environments. The anthropogenic ecological forcing of communication through global transport has profound implications regarding island–continent links. Anthropogenic disturbances along continental margins and insular coasts contribute to shaping island biotas in ecological time, but also have evolutionary consequences of global resonance. Patterns of human landscape and resource use (geographical space and ecological communities and species), as well as increasing ecological connectivity of oceanic islands and mainland, are chief driving forces in island biogeography that should be reappraised. Global indirect effects of human activities (i.e. climate change) may also affect islands and interact with these processes. We review the implications of direct and indirect anthropogenic disturbances on island biotic patterns, focusing on island size, isolation and introduced exotic species, as well as the unsettled issue of oceanic island ecological vulnerability.

Keywords

island disturbancealien speciesisland areaisolationvulnerabilityisland diversity patternsglobal changenon-equilibriumisland landscape pattern
Type
Subject Reviews
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 44 , Issue 4: Thematic section: Humans and Island Environments , December 2017 , pp. 371 - 380
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0376892917000236

References

Adsersen, H. (1995) Research on islands: classic, recent, and prospective approaches. In: Islands. Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Function, eds. Vitousek, P.M., Loope, L. & Adsersen, H., pp. 7–21. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Anderson, A.J. (1995) Prehistoric Polynesian impact on the New Zealand environment: Te Whenua Hou. In: Historical Ecology in the Pacific Islands, eds. Kirch, P.V. & Hunt, T.L., pp. 271–283. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, A.J. (2002) Faunal collapse, landscape change and settlement history in remote Oceania. World Archaeology 33: 375–390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baine, M., Howard, M., Kerr, S., Edgar, G. & Toral, V. (2007) Coastal and marine resource management in the Galapagos Islands and the Archipelago of San Andres: issues, problems and opportunities. Ocean and Coastal Management 50: 148–173.Google Scholar
Baldacchino, G. (2006) Islands, island studies. Island Studies Journal 1: 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blondel, J. & Aronson, J. (1999) Biology and Wildlife of the Mediterranean Region. Oxford, UK/New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borges, P.A.V. & Hortal, J. (2009) Time, area and isolation: factors driving the diversification of Azorean arthropods. Journal of Biogeography 36: 178–191.Google Scholar
Brown, W.L. Jr. & Wilson, E.O. (1956) Character displacement. Systematic Zoology 5: 49–64.Google Scholar
Bunce, M., Mee, M., Rodwell, L.D. & Gibb, R. (2009) Collapse and recovery in a remote small island – a tale of adaptive cycles or downward spirals? Global Environmental Change 19: 213–226.Google Scholar
Burns, K.C., Berg, J., Bialynicka-Birula, A., Kratchmer, S. & Shortt, K. (2010) Tree diversity on islands: assembly rules, passive sampling and the theory of island biogeography. Journal of Biogeography 37: 1876–1883.Google Scholar
Carlquist, S. (1974) Island Biology. New York, NY/London, UK: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caujapé-Castells, J., Tye, A., Crawford, D.J., Santos-Guerra, A., Sakai, A., Beaver, K., Lobin, W., Vincent-Florens, F.B., Moura, M., Jardim, R., Gómes, I. & Kueffer, C. (2010) Conservation of oceanic island floras: present and future global challenges. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 12: 107–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chown, S.L., Sinclair, B.J. & van Vuuren, D.J. (2008) DNA barcoding and the documentation of alien species establishment on sub-Antarctic Marion Island. Polar Biology 31: 651–655.Google Scholar
Cincotta, R.P., Wisnewski, J. & Engelman, R. (2000) Human population in the biodiversity hotspots. Nature 404: 990–992.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
da Fonseca, G.A.B., Mittermerier, R.A. & Mittermeier, C.G. (2006) Conservation of Island Biodiversity: Importance, Challenges and Opportunities. Washington, DC: Centre for Applied Biodiversity Science.Google Scholar
Denslow, J.S. (2003) Weeds in paradise: thoughts on the invasibility of tropical islands. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 90: 119–127.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. (1975a) Assembly of species communities. In: Ecology and Evolution of Communities, eds. Cody, M.L. & Diamond, J., pp. 342–444. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.Google Scholar
Diamond, J.M. (1975b) The island dilemma: lessons of modern biogeographic studies for the design of natural reserves. Biological Conservation 7: 129–146.Google Scholar
Enoch, M.P. & Warren, J.P. (2008). Automobile use within selected island states. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 42: 1208–1219.Google Scholar
Fattorini, S. (2010) Influence of recent geography and paleogeography on the structure of reptile communities in a land-bridge archipelago. Journal of Herpetology 44: 242–252.Google Scholar
Fernandes, R. & Pinho, P. (2017) The distinctive nature of spatial development on small islands. Progress in Planning 112: 1–18.Google Scholar
Ficetola, G.F. & Padoa-Schioppa, E. (2009) Human activities alter biogeographical patterns of reptiles on Mediterranean islands. Global Ecology and Biogeography 18: 214–222.Google Scholar
Florencio, M., Cardoso, P., Lobo, J.M., Azevedo, E.B. & Borges, P.A.V. (2013) Arthropod assemblage homogenization in oceanic islands: the role of exotic and indigenous species under landscape disturbance. Diversity and Distributions 19: 1450–1460.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Florencio, M., Lobo, J.M., Cardoso, P., Almeida-Neto, M. & Borges, P.A.V. (2015) The colonisation of exotic species does not have to trigger faunal homogenisation: lessons from the assembly patterns of arthropods on oceanic islands. PLoS ONE 10 (5): e0128276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garden, D. (2005) Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.Google Scholar
Gibbard, P.L. & Walker, M.J.C. (2014) The term ‘Anthropocene’ in the context of formal geological classification. Geological Society of London Special Publications 395: 29–37.Google Scholar
Gillespie, R.G. & Clague, D.A. (eds.). (2009) Encyclopedia of Islands. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gillespie, R.G. (2001) Oceanic islands: models of diversity. In: Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Second Edition), ed. Levin, S.A., pp. 590–599. Waltham, MA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gotelli, N.J. (2004) Assembly rules. In: Foundations of Biogeography: Classic Papers with Commentaries, eds. Lomolino, M.V., Sax, D.F., & Brown, J.H., pp. 1027–1035. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Grant, P.R. & Grant, B.R. (2006) Evolution of character displacement in Darwin's finches. Science 313: 224–226.Google Scholar
Grant, P.R. (1994) Ecological character displacement. Science 266: 746–747.Google Scholar
Helmus, M.R., Mahler, D.L. & Losos, J.B. (2014) Island biogeography of the Anthropocene. Nature 513: 543–546.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hickman, C.S. & Hickman, C.S. (2009). Lord Howe Island. In: Encyclopedia of Islands, eds. Gillespie, R.G. & Clague, D.A.. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
GESAMP (IMO/FAO/UNESCO-IOC/WMO/WHOI/IAEA/UN/UNEP Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution) (1998) Opportunistic Settlers and the Problem of the Ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi Invasion in the Black Sea. London, UK: International Maritime Organization.Google Scholar
Katovai, E., Sirikolo, M., Srinivasan, U., Edwards, W. & Laurance, W.F. (2016) Factors influencing tree diversity and compositional change across logged forests in the Solomon Islands. Forest Ecology and Management 372: 53–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keegan, W.F. & Diamond, J.M. (1987) Colonization of islands by humans: a biogeographical perspective. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 10: 49–92.Google Scholar
Kier, G., Kreft, H., Ming, T., Jetz, W., Ibisch, P.L., Nowicki, C., Mutke, J. & Barthlott, W. (2009) A global assessment of endemism and species richness across island and mainland regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 23: 9322–9327.Google Scholar
Kueffer, C. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2010) Comparative ecological research on oceanic islands. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 12: 81–82.Google Scholar
Kueffer, C., Daehler, C.C., Torres-Santana, C.W., Lavergne, C., Meyer, J.Y., Otto, R. & Silva, L. (2010) A global comparison of plant invasions on oceanic islands. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 12: 145–161.Google Scholar
Kueffer, C., Kronauer, L. & Edwards, P.J. (2009) Wider spectrum of fruit traits in invasive than native floras may increase the vulnerability of oceanic islands to plant invasions. Oikos 118: 1327–1334.Google Scholar
Lewis, S.L. & Maslin, M.A. (2015) Defining the Anthropocene. Nature 519: 171–180.Google Scholar
Loire, E., Chiari, Y., Bernard, A., Cahais, V., Romiguier, J., Nabholz, B., Lourenço, J.M. & Galtier, N. (2013) Population genomics of the endangered giant Galápagos tortoise. Genome Biology 14: R136.Google Scholar
Lomolino, M.V. & Heaney, L.R. (2004) Frontiers of Biogeography: New Directions in the Geography of Nature. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Google Scholar
Losos, J. (2000) Ecological character displacement and the study of adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97: 5693–5695.Google Scholar
Losos, J.B. & Ricklefs, R.E. (2009) Adaptation and diversification on islands. Nature 457: 830–836.Google Scholar
MacArthur, R.H. & Wilson, E.O. (1967) The Theory of Island Biogeography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Maul, G. (2005) Small Islands. In: Encyclopedia of Coastal Science, ed. Schwartz, M.L., pp. 883–887. The Netherlands: Springer.Google Scholar
McGuinness, K.A. (1984) Equations and explanations in the study of species area curves. Biological Review 59: 423–440.Google Scholar
Muchhala, N. & Potts, M.D. (2007) Character displacement among bat-pollinated flowers of the genus Burmeistera: analysis of mechanism, process and pattern. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 274: 2731–2737.Google Scholar
Nunn, P.D. (1994) Oceanic Islands. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Otto, R., Arteaga, M.A., Delgado, J.D., Arévalo, J.R., Blandino, C. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2014) Road edge effect and elevation patterns of native and alien plants on an oceanic island (Tenerife, Canary Islands). Folia Geobotanica 49: 65–82.Google Scholar
Otto, R. Barone, R., Delgado, J.D., Arévalo, J.R., Garzón-Machado, V., Cabrera-Rodríguez, F. & Fernández-Palacios, J.M. (2012) Diversity and distribution of the last remnants of endemic juniper woodlands on Tenerife, Canary Islands. Biodiversity and Conservation 21: 1811–1834.Google Scholar
Otto, R., Krüsi, B.O. & Kienast, F. (2007) Degradation of an arid coastal landscape in relation to land use changes in Southern Tenerife (Canary Islands). Journal of Arid Environments 70: 527–539.Google Scholar
Patiño, J., Carine, M., Mardulyn, P., Devos, N., Mateo, R.G., González-Mancebo, J.M., Shaw, A.J. & Vanderpoorten, A. (2015) Approximate Bayesian computation reveals the crucial role of oceanic islands for the assembly of continental biodiversity. Systematics Biology 64: 579–589.Google Scholar
Preston, FW. (1968) On modelling islands. Ecology 49: 592–594.Google Scholar
Pretto, F., Celesti-Grapow, L., Carli, E. & Blasi, C. (2010) Influence of past land use and current human disturbance on non-native plant species on small Italian islands. Plant Ecology 210: 225–239.Google Scholar
Richardson, D.M. & Whittaker, R.J. (2010) Conservation biogeography – foundations, concepts and challenges. Diversity and Distributions 16: 313–320.Google Scholar
Ricklefs, R.E. & Bermingham, E. (2002) The concept of the taxon cycle in biogeography. Global Ecology and Biogeography 11: 353–361.Google Scholar
Rigal, F., Whittaker, R.J., Triantis, K.A. & Borges, P.A.V. (2013) Integration of non-indigenous species within the interspecific abundance–occupancy relationship. Acta Oecologica – International Journal of Ecology 48: 69–75.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, A. (2001) Erosión y desertificación. In: Naturaleza de las Islas Canarias. Ecología y Conservación, eds. Fernández-Palacios, J.M. & Martín Esquivel, J.L., pp. 317–321. Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain: Turquesa.Google Scholar
Sax, D.F., Gaines, S.D. & Brown, J.H. (2002) Species invasions exceed extinctions on islands worldwide: a comparative study of plants and birds. The American Naturalist 160: 766–783.Google Scholar
Sax, D.V. & Brown, J.H. (2000) The paradox of invasion. Global Ecology & Biogeography 9: 363–371.Google Scholar
Schoener, T.W., Spiller, D.A. & Losos, J.B. (2001) Predators increase the risk of catastrophic extinction of prey populations. Nature 412: 183--186.Google Scholar
Shugart, H.H. (2004) How the Earthquake Bird Got Its Name and Other Tales of an Unbalanced Nature. New Haven, CT/London, UK: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Simberloff, D. (1995) Why do introduced species appear to devastate islands more than mainland areas? Pacific Science 49: 87–97.Google Scholar
Simberloff, D. & Levin, B. (1985) Predictable sequences of species loss with decreasing island area – land birds in two archipelagos. New Zealand Journal of Ecology 8: 11–20.Google Scholar
Simberloff, D.S. & Wilson, E.O. (1969) Experimental zoogeography of islands: the colonisation of empty islands. Ecology 50: 278–296.Google Scholar
Smith, C.M. & Davies, E.T. (2012) Emigration beyond Earth: Human Adaptation and Space Colonization. New York, NY: Springer Science + Business.Google Scholar
Smith, R.A. & Rausher, M.D. (2008) Experimental evidence that selection favors character displacement in the ivyleaf morning glory. The American Naturalist 171: 1–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sol, D. (2000) Are islands more susceptible to be invaded than continents? Birds say no. Ecography 23: 687–692.Google Scholar
Steinbauer, M. J, Otto, R., Naranjo-Cigala, A., Beierkuhnlein, C. & Fernádez-Palacios, J.M. (2012) Increase of island endemism with altitude – speciation processes on oceanic islands. Ecography 35: 23–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terzopoulou, S., Rigal, F., Whittaker, R.J., Borges, P.A.V. & Triantis, K.A. (2015) Drivers of extinction: the case of Azorean beetles. Biology Letters 11: 1–4.Google Scholar
Thomas, C.D. (2013) The Anthropocene could raise biological diversity. Nature 502: 7.Google Scholar
Valero, G.M.C. (1994) Spratly archipelago dispute: Is the question of sovereignty still relevant? Marine Policy 18: 314–344.Google Scholar
Walter, H.S. (2004) The mismeasure of islands: implications for biogeographic theory and the conservation of nature. Journal of Biogeography 31: 177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warren, B.H., Simberloff, D., Ricklefs, R.E., Aguilee, R., Condamine, F.L., Gravel, D., Morlon, H., Mouquet, N., Rosindell, J., Casquet, J., Conti, E., Cornuault, J., Fernández-Palacios, J.M., Hengl, T., Norder, S.J., Rijsdijk, K.F., Sanmartin, I., Strasberg, D., Triantis, K.A., Valente, L.M., Whittaker, R.J., Gillespie, R.G., Emerson, B.C. & Thebaud, C. (2015) Islands as model systems in ecology and evolution: prospects fifty years after MacArthur–Wilson. Ecology Letters 18: 200–217.Google Scholar
Wetzel, F.T., Kissling, W.D., Beissmann, H. & Penn, D.J. (2012) Future climate change driven sea-level rise: secondary consequences from human displacement for island biodiversity. Global Change Biology 18: 2707–2719.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R.J. & Fernandez-Palacios, J.M. (2007) Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R.J. (1995) Disturbed island ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10: 421–425.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R.J., Ladle, R.J., Araújo, M.B., Fernandez-Palacios, J.M., Delgado, J.D. & Arévalo, J.R. (2007) The island immaturity – speciation pulse model of island evolution: an alternative to the ‘diversity begets diversity’ model. Ecography 30: 321–327.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R.J., Triantis, K.A. & Ladle, R.J. (2008) A general dynamic theory of oceanic island biogeography. Journal of Biogeography 35: 977–994.Google Scholar
Williamson, M. (1988) Relationship of species number to area, distance and other variables. In: Analytical Biogeography, eds. Myers, A.A. & Giller, P.S., pp. 91–115. London, UK: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Delgado supplementary material

Delgado supplementary material 1

Download Delgado supplementary material(File)
File 28 KB