Island Biogeography: as Illustrated by Birds in the Australasian Region

Abstract

Island biogeography deals with the distribution of animals and plants on islands. It is concerned with the origin of organisms on the islands, the numbers of species present as well as their evolution and ecology. Islands have fascinated biologists for at least 200 years, not only because they are remote and the animals and plants on them are often strange, but also because they represent simple ecosystems in which ecological and evolutionary problems can be tackled without the overwhelming complexity of continental ecosystems. Alfred Russell Wallace's extensive travels and writings on the Malay Archipelago provided an early comprehensive study of island fauna and flora (Wallace, 1869). The massive archipelago between South-east Asia and New Guinea now bears the name of Wallacea. Good accounts of island biogeography are given in MacArthur (1972), Gorman (1979) and Spellerberg et al. (1999).