The species–area relationship: an exploration of that 'most general, yet protean pattern'

Abstract

The generality of the increase in the number of species with the physical space sampled has long been known and commented on by natural scientists (e.g. Watson, 1859; Arrhenius, 1921; Rosenzweig, 1995). Although the basic phenomena were reasonably well described and understood by the time of the seminal contributions of Preston (1962) and MacArthur & Wilson (1967), analyses of the variation in form of the various types of species–area relationship (SAR) have continued to receive attention (reviewed in, e.g. Connor & McCoy, 1979; Rosenzweig, 1995; Whittaker & Ferna´ndez-Palacios, 2007). This is because the SAR is a fundamentally important pattern within ecology and understanding the processes that shape the particular form taken by each type of SAR is crucial for both ecological biogeography and conservation biogeography (see reviews in Lomolino et al., 2010; Ladle & Whittaker, 2011). […].