Experimental Studies on Islands

Abstract

As we seek to understand the relationship between biological diversity and ecosystem processes, we often turn to islands because of their unique biota — impoverished, disharmonic, and alien-infested though it may be, there are still those who love it. Islands can be viewed as natural experiments, and ecosystem processes thereon can be compared with those on continents or other islands having similar geology, topography, and climate. Such comparisons should do much to elucidate the relationships between biota and fluxes of materials and energy, as described in Chapter 14.