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Theory and early empirical work posed that herbivore pressure should be lower on islands than on the mainland owing to lower herbivore abundance and diversity in insular systems. Consequently, plant taxa found on islands are expected to be less protected or even to have lost their defences completely. While early observational studies supported the prediction of lower herbivory and plant defences on islands, recent island-mainland comparisons have yielded mixed results, with some studies finding no differences between islands and mainlands or, surprisingly, higher herbivory and plant defences on islands. In this book, the authors aim to re-assess current theory and initiate a new generation of work on insularity effects on plant-herbivore interactions. This book aims to fill the research gaps by integrating the research that has been done to date and by compiling and summarising new research on insularity effects on plant-herbivore interactions. It provides a critical examinationof the patterns in light of classical theory and identifies potential mechanisms or underlying processes. It also aims to raise new questions that will form the basis for a revised and more robust research programme.

From a small island in the Baltic Sea to the large tropical islands of Borneo and Madagascar, Messages from Islands is a global tour of these natural, water-bound laboratories. In this career-spanning work, Ilkka Hanski draws upon the many islands on which he performed fieldwork to convey key themes in ecology. By exploring the islands'biodiversity as an introduction to general issues, Hanski helps us to learn how species and communities interact in fragmented landscapes, how evolution generates biodiversity, and how this biodiversity is maintained over time. Beginning each chapter on a particular island, Hanski dives into reflections on his own field studies before going on to pursue a variety of ecological questions, including: What is the biodiversity crisis? What are extinction thresholds and extinction debts? What can the biodiversity hypothesis tell us about rapidly increasing allergies, asthma, and other chronic inflammatory disorders? The world's largest island, Greenland, for instance, is the starting point for a journey into the benefits that humankind acquires from biodiversity, including the staggering biodiversity of microbes in the ecosystems that are closest to us—the ecosystems in our guts, in our respiratory tracts, and under our skin. Conceptually oriented but grounded in an adventurous personal narrative, Messages from Islands is a landmark work that lifts the natural mysteries of islands from the sea, bringing to light the thrilling complexities and connections of ecosystems worldwide.

Alfred Russel Wallace is best known as the codiscoverer, with Charles Darwin, of natural selection, but he was also history's foremost tropical naturalist and the father of biogeography, the modern study of the geographical basis of biological diversity. Island Life has long been considered one of his most important works. In it he extends studies on the influence of the glacial epochs on organismal distribution patterns and the characteristics of island biogeography, a topic as vibrant and actively studied today as it was in 1880. The book includes history's first theory of continental glaciation based on a combination of geographical and astronomical causes, a discussion of island classification, and a survey of worldwide island faunas and floras. The year 2013 will mark the centennial of Wallace's death and will see a host of symposia and reflections on Wallace's contributions to evolution and natural history. This reissue of the first edition of Island Life, with a foreword by David Quammen and an extensive commentary by Lawrence R. Heaney, who has spent over three decades studying island biogeography in Southeast Asia, makes this essential and foundational reference available and accessible once again.

A series of original papers and reviews dealing with the peculiarities of island insects and their conservation in many parts of the world. Contributions to this special issue of Journal of Insect Conservation range from biogeographical analyses and ecological features of island insects and their evolution to the variety of concerns for their wellbeing, and practical conservation through a variety of, sometimes novel, approaches. They provide a valuable and up-to-date resource for entomologists and conservation practitioners.

Biogeography considers the distribution of biological units over a wide range of scales. The units range from genotypes, populations and species to families and higher taxa. Processes can be local, such as the isolation on islands due to sea-level fluctuations, or large-scale tectonic processes that separates continents and creates oceans. In all processes time is an important factor and by combining data on recent patterns with paleontological data the understanding of the distribution of extant taxa can be improved. This volume focuses on speciation due to isolation in island-like settings, and the evolution of large-scale diversity as the result of origination, maintenance and extinction.