Robert J. Whittaker is Professor of Biogeography in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford and holds a part time professorial position at the Centre for Macroecology, Evolution, and Climate in the University of Copenhagen. He is a cofounder and past President of the International Biogeography Society. He is coauthor of Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation (OUP, 2006). His research interests span island biogeography, diversity theory, macroecology, and conservation biogeography.

José María Fernández-Palacios is Full Professor of Ecology at the La Laguna University, Tenerife, Spain. He is an internationally recognised researcher on island ecology and biogeography, and in 2019 was elected President of the Society of Island Biology (SIB), a scientific association of island researchers and managers worldwide. He is coauthor of Island Biogeography: Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation (OUP, 2006).

Tom Matthews is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK. He researches global environmental change issues using macroecological, macroevolutionary and biogeographical approaches. He applies a mixture of theoretical and empirical methods to investigate various macroecological topics, including species-area relationships and species abundance distributions. He has a keen interest in island systems, and in particular the application of island theory to habitat island systems.

• Preface and Acknowledgements


• PART 1: Setting the Scene: Islands as Natural Laboratories


• 1: The natural laboratory paradigm


• 2: Island types, origins, and dynamics


• 3: Island environments


• 4: The biogeography of island life: biodiversity hotspots in context


• PART 2: Island Ecology


• 5: Island macroecology


• 6: Assembly rules for island metacommunities


• 7: Extending the timescale: island biodynamics in response to island geodynamics


• PART 3: Island Evolution


• 8: Colonization, evolutionary change, and speciation


• 9: Evolutionary diversification across islands and archipelagos


• 10: Island evolutionary syndromes in animals


• 11: Island evolutionary syndromes in - and involving - plants


• PART 4: Human Impact and Conservation


• 12: The application of island theory to fragmented landscapes


• 13: The human transformation of island ecosystems


• 14: Anthropogenic extinction on islands: a synthesis


• 15: Meeting the conservation challenge