NAME: NUROTUN NA’IMAH

NIM: 180722639513
OFF H 2018
DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
MALANG STATE UNIVERSITY

2. In his book ‘Systematics and the Origin of Species’, Ernst Mayr wrote
“The most significant way to cut off a population is by geographical isolation.”
Illustrate this statement with reference to real islands

Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species captivated biologists far

beyond the confines of genetics. In the mountains of New Guinea, an ornithologist
named Ernst Mayr (right) found the book to be an enormous inspiration. Mayr
specialized in discovering new species of birds and mapping out their ranges. It is no
easy matter determining exactly which group of birds deserves the title of species. A
bird of paradise species might be recognizable by the color of its feathers, but from
place to place, it might have a huge amount of variation in other traits — on one
mountain it might have an extravagantly long tail while on another its tail would be
cut square.

Biologists typically tried to bring order to this confusion by recognizing

subspecies - local populations of a species that were distinct enough to warrant a
special label of their own. But Mayr saw that the subspecies label was far from a
perfect solution. In some cases, subspecies weren't actually distinct from each other,
but graded into each other like colors in a rainbow. In other cases, what looked like a
subspecies might, on further inspection, turn out to be a separate species of its own.

Like many other naturalists of his day, Mayr suspected at first that some kind of
Lamarckian heredity might be at work in evolution. But when he read Dobzhansky
and other architects of the Modern Synthesis, he realized that it was possible to
explain the origin of species with genetics. Mayr also realized that the puzzle of
species and subspecies shouldn't be considered a headache: they were actually a
living testimony to the evolutionary process Dobzhansky wrote about. Variations
emerge in different parts of a species' range, creating differences between populations
(see example below). In one part of a range the birds may possess long tails, in
others, square tails. But because the birds also mate with their neighbors, they do not
become isolated into a species of their own.

Picture 1. The size and shape of Dicrurus paradiseus' crest varies

considerably across southeast Asia.
 Picture 2. The tails of birds of paradise living in the mountains of western New Guinea (A)
are longer than those of birds li ving in the more central mountains (B).

A population of birds, or any organism, can speciate if isolated from its

neighbors. In his 1942 book, Systematics and the Origin of Species, Mayr argued that
the most significant way to cut off a population is by geographical isolation (see
illustration at right). For example, a glacier may thrust down a valley, creating two
separate populations, one on either side of the glacier. A rising ocean may turn a
peninsula into a chain of islands, stranding the beetles on each of them. This sort of
isolation doesn't have to last forever; it needs only form a barrier long enough to let
the isolated population become genetically incompatible with the rest of its species.
Once the glacier melts, or the ocean drops and turns the islands back into a peninsula,
the animals will be unable to interbreed. They will live side by side, but follow
separate evolutionary fates.

Sumber: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article in acces when Sunday, 28

Apr 2019

4.Extinction is common on islands. Discuss why?

Island biogeography is the study of the distribution and dynamics of species in

island environments. Due to their isolation from more widespread continental species,
islands are ideal places for unique species to evolve.
Islands, however, are also places of concentrated extinction. Of 724 known
animal extinctions in the last 400 years, about half were of island species, and of the
bird species that have become extinct in that period, at least 90 percent were island
dwellers. Yet the Earth’s total land area contains only a fraction of island
environments. Why do so many extinctions occur on islands? Island species are
especially vulnerable to extinction because they have a small geographic range. They
are limited to the island or a particular part of the island, and they usually have low
population numbers. These factors make them more likely to become extinct as a
result of natural factors such as disease, fire, and normal population fluctuations.
If the population is small to begin with, a natural occurrence may occasionally kill
enough individuals so there is no longer a viable population of that species.
This dynamic is exacerbated when introduced species such as humans, their
domesticated animals, pests, and diseases arrive on the island. Native species that
have evolved without contact with these new organisms are often unable to compete
or defend themselves.
Habitat destruction, direct hunting, competition for food, and other factors put
intense pressure on island species. In the continental setting, a species may still have
other undisturbed populations located in other areas, or the local population may be
augmented by incoming individuals from other populations not experiencing the
same pressures. In the island setting, there are no other populations to draw from, and
the species may very well become extinct.
The lessons of island biogeography have great implications for the future.
Continental species are experiencing an unprecedented level of habitat ffragmentation
as a result of human activities. Suitable habitat becomes fragmented into small
patches located in a “sea” of disturbed land. These small patches function very much
like isolated islands in a real sea. Species located in these habitat fragments become
more vulnerable to extinction because of the same factors that doom their island
cousins. Habitat fragmentation and the lessons of island biogeography indicate that
conservationists should not concentrate their efforts solely on establishing small
protected areas. While reserves may be very useful, if they are the only islands of
habitat in an otherwise hostile environment, the species that depend on them may be
very vulnerable to extinction.Human activities throughout the landscape must be
made more compatible with maintaining habitat.

The importance of islands in revealing evolutionary processes has been

recognized since Darwin’s work on the Galapagos (Darwin, 1909) and Wallace’s
work in the Malay Archipelago (Wallace, 1876). Since, island biogeography has
provided many elegant examples of the evolutionary mechanisms involved in
generating biodiversity, including geological processes and colonization and
isolation. Archipelagos such as Hawaii and the Galapagos (photograph above)
provide examples where cycles of evolutionary radiation have produced replicated
patterns of endemic, often bizarre, forms. the extreme isolation of these islands
reduces the interplay between islands and continents—interchange is one-way
(islands as sinks) and limited to rare chance dispersal events. The West Indies and
island chains in the Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Comoros, Seychelles, Mascarenes)
are remarkable as they are sufficiently old and isolated to have generated endemic
forms, but close enough continents to sustain a dynamic two-way interaction with
diverse continental landmasses.

Two eminent ecologists, the late Robert MacArthur of Princeton University and
E. 0. Wilson of Harvard, developed a theory of "island biogeography" to explain such
uneven distributions. They proposed that the number of species on any island reflects
a balance between the rate at which new species colonize it and the rate at which
populations of established species become extinct. If a new volcanic island were to
rise out of the ocean off the coast of a mainland inhabited by 100 species of birds,
some birds would begin to immigrate across the gap and establish populations on the
empty, but habitable, island. The rate at which these immigrant species could become
established, however, would inevitably decline, for each species that successfully
invaded the island would diminish by one the pool of possible future invaders (the
same 100 species continue to live on the mainland, but those which have already
become residents of the island can no longer be classed as potential invaders).

Equally, the rate at which species might become extinct on the island would be
related to the number that have become residents. When an island is nearly empty, the
extinction rate is necessarily low because few species are available to become extinct.
And since the resources of an island are limited, as the number of resident species
increases, the smaller and more prone to extinction their individual populations are
likely to become. The rate at which additional species will establish populations will
be high when the island is relatively empty, and the rate at which resident populations
go extinct will be high when the island is relatively full. Thus, there must be a point
between 0 and 100 species (the number on the mainland) where the two rates are
equal -- where input from immigration balances output from extinction. That
equilibrium number of species would be expected to remain constant as long as the
factors determining the two rates did not change. But the exact species present should
change continuously as some species go extinct and others invade (including some
that have previously gone extinct), so that there is a steady turnover in the
composition of the fauna.

That is the essence of the MacArthur-Wilson equilibrium theory of island

biogeography. How well does it explain what we actually observe in nature? One
famous "test" of the theory was provided in 1883 by a catastrophic volcanic explosion
that devastated the island of Krakatoa, located between the islands of Sumatra and
Java. The flora and fauna of its remnant and of two adjacent islands were completely
exterminated, yet within 25 years (1908) thirteen species of birds had recolonized
what was left of the island. By 1919-21 twenty-eight bird species were present, and
by 1932-34, twenty-nine. Between the explosion and 1934, thirty-four species
actually became established, but five of them went extinct. By 1951-52 thirty-three
species were present, and by 1984-85, thirty-five species. During this half century
(1934-1985), a further fourteen species had become established, and eight had
become extinct. As the theory predicted, the rate of increase declined as more and
more species colonized the island. In addition, as equilibrium was approached there
was some turnover. The number in the cast remained roughly the same while the
actors gradually changed.

The theory predicts other things, too. For instance, everything else being equal,
distant islands will have lower immigration rates than those close to a mainland, and
equilibrium will occur with fewer species on distant islands. Close islands will have
high immigration rates and support more species. By similar reasoning, large islands,
with their lower extinction rates, will have more species than small ones -- again
everything else being equal (which it frequently is not, for larger islands often have a
greater variety of habitats and more species for that reason). Island biogeographic
theory has been applied to many kinds of problems, including forecasting faunal
changes caused by fragmenting previously continuous habitat. For instance, in most
of the eastern United States only patches of the once-great deciduous forest remain,
and many species of songbirds are disappearing from those patches. One reason for
the decline in birds, according to the theory, is that fragmentation leads to both lower
immigration rates (gaps between fragments are not crossed easily) and higher
extinction rates (less area supports fewer species).

Indications of such changes in species composition during habitat

fragmentation were found in studies conducted between 1953 and 1976 in a 16-acre
nature preserve in Connecticut in which a forest was reestablishing itself. During that
period development was increasing the distance between the preserve and other
woodlands. As the forest grew back, species such as American Redstarts that live in
young forest colonized the area, and birds such as the Field Sparrow, which prefer
open shrublands, became scarce or disappeared. In spite of the successional trend
toward large trees, however, two bird species normally found in mature forest
suffered population declines, and five such species went extinct on the reserve. The
extinctions are thought to have resulted from lowering immigration rates caused by
the preserve's increasing isolation and by competition from six invading species
characteristic of suburban habitats.

Indications of such changes in species composition during habitat

fragmentation were found in studies conducted between 1953 and 1976 in a 16-acre
nature preserve in Connecticut in which a forest was reestablishing itself. During that
period development was increasing the distance between the preserve and other
woodlands. As the forest grew back, species such as American Redstarts that live in
young forest colonized the area, and birds such as the Field Sparrow, which prefer
open shrublands, became scarce or disappeared. In spite of the successional trend
toward large trees, however, two bird species normally found in mature forest
suffered population declines, and five such species went extinct on the reserve. The
extinctions are thought to have resulted from lowering immigration rates caused by
the preserve's increasing isolation and by competition from six invading species
characteristic of suburban habitats.

Island biogeographic theory can be a great help in understanding the effects of

habitat fragmentation. It does not, however, address other factors that can greatly
influence which birds reside in a fragment. Some of these include whether nest-
robbing species are present in such abundance that they could prevent certain
invaders from establishing themselves, whether the fragment is large enough to
contain a territory of the size required by some members of the pool of potential
residents, or whether other habitat requirements of species in that pool can be
satisfied. To take an extreme example of the latter, a grass-covered, treeless habitat in
California would not be colonized by Acorn, Nuttall's, Downy, or Hairy
Woodpeckers, even if it were large and all four woodpeckers are found in adjacent
woodlands. Ecological theory is designed to help us think about the real world, but it
is not a substitute for an intimate knowledge of nature's ways.

Sumber: Ehrlich. Paul R., Dobkin. David S., and Wheye Darryl. 1998. Island Biogeography,
(Online)
(https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Island_Biogeography.html) in
access when Sunday, 28 April 2019.

http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/spot_spisland in access when Monday, 29 April 2019.

5.Insularity (= isolation) is the key property of islands that determines all

aspects of island ecology and the evolutionary history of island biota. Discuss.

Although islands in the sea, other habitat islands, and fragments are all insular
by virtue of their geographical and/ or ecological isolation from similar environments,
they are nonetheless quite diverse. For example, they vary in accessibility, size, age,
permanence, habitat complexity and degree of contrast with the surrounding matrix
(MacArthur & Wilson, 1967; Whittaker, 1998; Ricketts, 2001; Watson, 2002). Yet
researchers have sometimes been tempted to treat all insular systems as functionally
similar, for example by uncritically applying island biogeography theory to the design
of nature reserves (Simberloff & Abele, 1982). These attempts have revealed that we
must examine the phenomenon of insularity in greater detail if we wish to make
generalizations about how it structures biological diversity (Lomolino, 2000; Watson,
2002). As a step towards understanding the effects of insularity, we convened a
conference on the ‘Ecology of Insular Biotas’ in 2001 (Denslow, 2001), attended by
170 scientists from a broad range of disciplines. This special issue contains selected
contributions from these conference participants. The papers are grouped into four
overlapping categories that reflect contemporary influences on the interplay between
process and pattern in insular systems: ecological processes, evolutionary processes,
invasive alien species and habitat fragmentation.

Many basic ecological principles are derived from island biogeography,

zoogeography and phytogeography, namely the science that spreads the spread and
movement of animals and planting across islands and wider geographical areas
(Morrisonet al. 1992).

The rate of immigration will generally be related to the isolation level of the
island. Islands that have a long distance from the continent will have more species
little compared to islands that have close proximity to the continent. so that the
degree of biodiversity and the rate of local extinction will be determined by the area
of the island and the speed of migration are determined by the distance of the island
to the source. Unique developments made in island biogeography theory by
MacArthur and Wilson (1967) not only discusses species-isolation relations but also
relationships species-area, therefore the two scientists together consider two the main
'island' features are area and isolation

In the 19th century, Charles Darwin put forward a theory which explains the
emergence of biological diversity. The theory is known as biological evolution. The
theory of evolution explains that character changes in a population inherited from
generation to generation. hanges to these characters can give rise to types new (new
species). cause evolution Natural resource competition, Difference between one
individual and the other as due to adaptation to conditions in nature / environment,
Because the environment is always changing, individuals even those who have
adapted to the environment change.

Sumber: Donald R. Drake, Christa P. H. Mulder, David R. Towns and Charles H. Daugherty
.The biology of insularity: an introduction. journal of Biogeography, 29, 563–569