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9780198501718

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Peter Grant has done an especially fine job of editing, contributing not only an introduction to each of the three sections (evolution on islands, speciation, and adaptive radiations), but also a chapter on speciation and hybridization of Galapagos finches and a long and thoughtful summary of the volume. The contributed chapters are almost all excellent, and the book is well worth reading, particularly for those interested in speciation. --Evolution<br> This is a counterpart to several other volumes that focus on island ecology, but give shorter shrift to evolution on islands. The very features (isolation, clear boundaries, relatively small size) that render islands attractive for ecological research also make them important subjects of evolutionary studies. For example, what would we know about speciation were it not for islands? . . . The breadth of coverage is striking, spanning matters as diverse as the species-area relationship, through geological fluctuations in lake levels and geographic shifts in tropical forest islands, to the mathematics of population genetic models associated with speciation and maintenance of variation. . . . Evolution on Islands breathes new life into island biology, a subject that had faded somewhat from attention except in the conservation context of the disproportionate endangerment and extinction of island species. --The Quarterly Review of Biology<br> Many of the celebrated instances of island evolution are reviewed and evaluated in this edited volume, including such classical cases of adaptive radiations on remote oceanic archipelagoes as Hawaiian drosophilines and lobelioids, Caribbean anoles, Galapagos finches, Polynesian snails, and CanaryIslands lacertines. . . . [C]overage is broad taxonomically, geographically, and topographically . . . A central theme of the book is evaluation of the extent to which novel forms on islands are generated predominantly via founder effects alone . . . versus adaptation via directional selection for new phenotypes in new insular environments . . . Certainly there are challenging questions here to keep us engaged for a very long time . . . I note finally that this book owes much of its cohesion to the several overview chapters that are written by its editor. These essays collectively represent a fine synthesis of current thought on island evolutionary processes . . . --Ecology<br> This book will be useful to anyone, professional or lay person, who is interested in evolution and ecology. --BIOSIS, Volume 50, Issue 10<br>

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