Colonisation of the Hawaiian Islands or How Evolution Complements Succession

Abstract

The assembly stages characteristic of the Hawaiian communities have no principal differences from those observed in a typical primary succession. Colonisation starts with producers and/or detritus, followed by decomposers and herbivores, and finally predators. The stages might have been similar, but not the mechanisms of assembling. Evolution on remote islands (Hawaii, Madagascar, New Zeeland, Galapagos, St. Helena, etc.) often produces species to occupy the existing vacant niches faster than they can arrive in a readily made form from a distant source of origin. Therefore, even though assembly of communities on such remote islands also gains acceleration, it remains significantly slower than the typical primary succession.

Here, on the remote islands, the niches, similar to those of the continent or its proximate islands, were often taken by organisms from different taxonomic groups produced by evolution. The inclination of communities to achieve a predefined organisational structure (the phenomenon of functional convergence of ecosystems) was so strong that the missing chains was hastily produced by evolution from ill-suited material, resulting in numerous peculiar ersatz species. Thus, closely related evolutionary descendants occupy positions that on the continents are held by representatives of more remote taxons, such as genera, families, or even orders.