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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: [email protected]
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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 

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Footnotes

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

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