深时时期的岛屿生物地理学

Contemporary marine islands host up to 30% of all terrestrial species, have experienced approximately 75% of all International Union for Conservation of Nature recorded extinctions, and are favoured model systems in ecology and evolution because of their repeated and well-delineated nature. A resurgence of island biogeography has emerged using the Quaternary–Neogene fossil record to reveal how geological dynamics and anthropogenic change affect island ecosystems. The application of island biogeographic theories and methods to putative island communities that existed before the Neogene (>23 Ma) is, however, almost entirely lacking. Studying such deep time island communities is fraught with difficulties, from identifying islands in the fossil record, through spatiotemporal discontinuities between parts of the fossil record, to biases in sampling and preservation. In this Perspective, we review the state of knowledge of deep time island communities to illustrate challenges in the study of the insular fossil record, and also show how modern island biogeographic theories and methods can be applied in deep time. As contemporary island biogeography theory and analysis increasingly focus on the dynamic nature of islands, and palaeobiology looks to understand past macro-scale ecological patterns, we propose the case for the intersection of the two fields to support the study and conservation of island ecosystems. Island ecosystems feature unique species assemblages with diverse evolutionary histories, but identifying island communities in deep time comes with its own challenges. This Perspective explores the application of island biogeographic study to deep time island communities and the challenges that researchers must navigate.