Body size structure of Pleistocene mammalian communities: what support is there for the “island rule”?

作     者：Maria R.PALOMBO 

作者机构：Department of Earth SciencesUniversity of Rome“La Sapienza”RomeItaly 

出 版 物：《Integrative Zoology》 (整合动物学（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2009年第4卷第4期

页      面：341-356页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 07[理学] 071002[理学-动物学] 

基　　金：MIUR 

主　　题：body size islands mammals Mediterranean Pleistocene.Body size structure of Sicilian and Cretan Pleistocene fauna 

摘      要：Islands are often regarded by scientists as living laboratories of evolution and an optimal context for the study of forces influencing evolution and *** main issues have been attentively scrutinized and debated:the loss of biodiversity and the peculiar changes undergone by island settlers,primarily changes in size of endemic *** time,several hypotheses have been formulated to explain the causal mechanism of body size *** of those islands where mainland taxa migrate more than once provide the most interesting data to answer the question of whether or not trends of insular taxa result from a predictable response to differences in competition and availability of niches between insular and mainland *** contribute to the debate,the body size structure of the Pleistocene mammalian faunas from two Mediterranean islands,Sicily and Crete,were analyzed and compared with the structure of coeval mainland *** results obtained suggest that:(i)size of endemic species does not directly depend on the area of islands;(ii)evolution and size of endemic species seems somewhat affected by the degree of isolation(constraining coloniza-tion from mainland)and physiography(sometimes permitting adaptive radiation);(iii)in unbalanced insular communities,the shift in size of non-carnivorous species largely depends on the nature of competing species;and(iv)body size of carnivorous species mainly depends on the size of the most available ***,it is rational to suppose that the body size of insular mammals mainly results from the peculiar biological dynamics that characterizes unbalanced insular *** interaction,particularly the intraguild competition,is the major driver behind the evolution of insular communities,leading towards an optimization of energy balance through a change in body size of endemic settlers.