Creative, innovative, and timely research on islands and island futures is warranted and pressing, not least because island(er)s are poorly served by established tropes of them as subordinate to continents or mainlands. Opportunities exist to provide a more thoroughgoing account of island life and island relations, and the seven papers in this special issue address that task. In works that cons...

The relationship between species number and island area is a fundamental rule in ecology. However, the extent to which interactions with exotic species and how the structure of species interactions is related to island area remain unexplored. Here, I document the relationship between island area and (i) interactions with exotic species and (ii) network structure of species interactions in the c...

The overabundance of large herbivores is now recognized as a serious ecological problem. However, the resulting ecological consequences remain poorly understood. The ecological effects of an increase in sika deer, Cervus nippon Temminck (Cervidae), on three insect groups of beetles was investigated: ground beetles (Carabidae), carrion beetles (Silphidae), and dung beetles (Scarabaeidae and Geot...

Relative to mainland Boa constrictor, boas from islands off the coast of Belize are described as being smaller, having longer tails, more elongate snouts, and proportionately larger eyes. However, no systematic confirmation of these patterns has been made. A morphometric study was initiated to investigate the body size and head shape variation between island and mainland boas in Belize. One hun...

Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis) are endemic to six of the eight California Channel Islands (USA). The island fox is classified as a threatened species by the State of California, and recently three of the six subspecies have experienced abrupt population declines. As part of a continuing effort to determine the cause of the declines, we tested island fox serum samples collected in 1988 (n = 1...

The Haliplidae, Gyrinidae and Dytiscidae (Coleoptera) of Prince Edward Island, Canada were surveyed during the years 2004-2005. A total of 2450 individuals from 79 species were collected from 98 different localities, among which 30 species are newly recorded from that region. Among these, Acilius sylvanus Hilsenhoff, Rhantus consimilis Motschulsky and Neoporus sulcipennis (Fall) stand out as re...

Island populations are convenient models of large-scale evolutionary processes and provide natural replicates of evolution. Recently founded island populations also provide an opportunity to study populations derived from few individuals, and these populations, in particular, often show rapid diversification. Here we report morphological and molecular data for the túngara frog, Physalaemus pust...

† Biological Sciences Center, Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada System, P.O. Box 60220, Reno, NV 89506-0220, U.S.A Island biogeography is the study of pattern in the distribution of species on islands as influenced by ecological and evolutionary processes related to island characteristics such as isolation and area. The MacArthur-Wilson theory of island biogeography asserts that t...

We present a comprehensive study of the nucleation kinetic of Cu on Ni~100! using variable-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy. The analysis of the saturation island density as a function of substrate temperature and deposition rate reveals that the smallest stable island abruptly changes from a dimer to a tetramer. From the Arrhenius plot, the migration barrier Em5~0.3560.02! eV, as well...

A genomic island consisting of 14 open reading frames, orfA to orfN was previously identified in Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain PAK and shown to be essential for glycosylation of flagellin. DNA microarray hybridization analysis of a number of P. aeruginosa strains from diverse origins showed that this island is polymorphic. PCR and sequence analysis confirmed that many P. aeruginosa strains carr...