ORIGINAL ARTICLE Time, area and isolation: factors driving the diversification of Azorean arthropods

• Main Authors: Paulo A. V. Borges, Azorean Biodiversity Group
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Single Island; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.560.7228; http://cita.angra.uac.pt/ficheiros/noticias/1260132693.pdf

Both authors contributed equally to this paper. Aim R. J. Whittaker et al. recently proposed a ‘general dynamic model of oceanic island biogeography ’ (GDM), providing a general explanation of island biodiversity patterns by relating fundamental biogeographical processes – speciation, immigration, extinction – to area (A) and time (T; maximum island geological age). We adapt their model, which predicts a positive relationship with area combined with a humped relationship to time (designated the ATT2 model), to study the factors promoting diversification on the Azores for several arthropod groups. Location The Azorean archipelago (North Atlantic; 37–40 N, 25–31 W). Methods We use the number of single-island endemics (SIEs) as a measure of diversification, to evaluate four different predictions for the variation in SIEs between different islands, derived from the GDM theory and our knowledge of the fauna and history of the Azores. We calculated the number of SIEs for seven