Introduction

Abstract

Due to its remarkable flora and fauna, the Socotra Archipelago has been the focus of a number of ecological studies dating back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Its unique biodiversity and – until very recently at least – relatively intact ecosystems have earned it the status of a World Heritage Site, and the islands are frequently referred to as the “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean”. Despite its small size, the archipelago is one of the major island biodiversity hotspots in the world with respect to its endemic flora, with roughly 37% of plant species and 15 genera unknown from elsewhere. The objective of this book is to summarise the existing state of knowledge on the vegetation in an ecological context. Apart from providing descriptive accounts of the various vegetation units, the book also deals therefore with the factors, predominantly abiotic, affecting the distribution and abundance of species. As with other isolated islands or archipelagos, Socotra is an ideal model system, relatively unaffected by many complicating factors, to test fundamental ecological theories from a wide variety of biological disciplines (including biogeography, evolutionary biology and colonisation).