Sir Joseph Hooker on insular floras: human impact and the natural laboratory paradigm

• Autor(a) principal: Carine, Mark
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Sequeira, Miguel Menezes de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.13/4179
• topic: Island biogeography; Evolution; Human impact; Herbarium; Biogeografía insular; Evolución; Impacto humano; Herbario; .; Faculdade de Ciências da Vida

In 1866, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) delivered a lecture to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Nottingham, U.K. entitled Insular floras. The lecture has been described as “the first systematic statement of the importance of islands for evolutionary studies”. As such, it can be seen to have contributed to the development of the “natural laboratory paradigm” that views islands as model systems for studying ecology and evolution. Hooker’s lecture also highlighted another key driver in shaping island diversity patterns, namely human impact. How and when does human impact compromise the uti lity of islands as ‘natural laboratories’ for studying evolution? To date, no fewer than eight “shortfalls” –knowledge gaps that impact on studies of biodiversity– have been described. In this paper, we suggest that a further shortfall is in order –a Hookerian shortfall– to account for uncertainty in the extent to which biodiversity patterns reflect natural rather than anthropogenic processes.