Foster's Rule Information
Foster's rule (also known as the island rule) is a principle in evolutionary biology stating that members of a species get smaller or bigger depending on the resources available in the environment. This is the core of the study of island biogeography. For example, it is known that pygmy mammoths evolved from normal mammoths on small islands. Similar evolutionary paths have been observed in elephants, hippopotamuses, boas, deer, and humans.[1][2]
It was first stated by J. Bristol Foster in 1964 in the journal Nature, in an article titled "The evolution of mammals on islands".[3] In it, he studied 116 island species and compared them to their mainland varieties. He proposed that certain island creatures evolved into larger versions of themselves while others became smaller versions of themselves. For this, he proposed the simple explanation that smaller creatures get larger in the absence of the predators they had attracted on the mainland and larger creatures become smaller with the absence of food sources.[4]
Later, that idea was expanded upon by the publication of The Theory of Island Biogeography, by Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson. And in 1978, Ted J. Case published a much longer and more complex paper on the topic in the journal Ecology.[5] Case also demonstrated that Foster's original conjecture for the reason all this happened was oversimplified and not completely true.
See also
- Deep-sea gigantism
- Dwarfing
- Insular dwarfism
- Island gigantism
- Homo floresiensis
References
- ^ Juan Luis Arsuaga, Andy Klatt, The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004, ISBN 1568583036, 9781568583037, p. 199.
- ^ Jean-Baptiste de Panafieu, Patrick Gries, Evolution, Seven Stories Press, 2007, ISBN 1583227849, 9781583227848, p 42.
- ^ Foster, J.B. (1964). "The evolution of mammals on islands". Nature 202 (4929): 234–235. Bibcode 1964Natur.202..234F. doi:10.1038/202234a0.
- ^ Whittaker, R.J. (1998). Island biogeography: ecology, evolution, and conservation. Oxford University Press, UK. pp. 73–75. ISBN 9780198500209.
- ^ Case, T.J. (1978). "A general explanation for insular body size trends in terrestrial vertebrates". Ecology 59 (1): 1–18. doi:10.2307/1936628.
- Foster, J. B. (1965) The evolution of the mammals of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. Occ. papers of the B. C. Prov. Museum, 14, 1-130.
External links
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Categories:
|