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Island biogeography

Shaped by sea-level shifts

Nature volume 532, pages 42–43 (2016)Cite this article

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An analysis of changes in island topography and climate that have occurred since the last glacial maximum 21,000 years ago shows how sea-level change has influenced the current biodiversity of oceanic islands. See Letter p.99

Since the time of nineteenth-century naturalists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, islands have played a crucial part in the development of several scientific disciplines. Among these is the field of biogeography, which analyses the distributions of species and the historical, ecological and evolutionary processes behind them. In a paper on Nature's website, Weigelt et al.1 explore how the approximately 122-metre rise in sea level that occurred between the last glacial maximum (LGM), around 21,000 years ago, and the present day has contributed to the diversity of plant species seen on islands today.

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Figure 1: Consequences of island dynamism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. José María Fernández-Palacios is in the Island Ecology and Biogeography Group, Instituto Universitario de Enfermedades Tropicales y Salud Pública de Canarias, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), La Laguna 38200, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.,

    José María Fernández-Palacios

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  1. José María Fernández-Palacios
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Correspondence to José María Fernández-Palacios.

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Fernández-Palacios, J. Shaped by sea-level shifts. Nature 532, 42–43 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17880

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