SynthesisNature ecology & evolution2021
The island rule explains consistent patterns of body size evolution in terrestrial vertebrates.
Synthesis in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
- Life span, growth, senescence and island syndrome: Accounting for imperfect detection and continuous growth.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Pooled it
- Emergent patterns of island biodiversity in the Anthropocene.Science advances · 2026Review
- Contrasting life history in the diminutive Dimetrodon species from North America and Germany.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Homo luzonensis and the role of homoplasy in the morphology of hominin insular species.Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society · 2026Article
- Island influences on plant functional traits and trait-trait associations across species- and community-scales.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Genetic Diversification in a New Guinean Frog Genus (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Changes in the chemical defenses of an invasive toad indicate drivers and limitations of adaptation.iScience · 2026Article
- Life history optimization and the macroevolution of mammal body size.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Spatial Structure Explains Morphological Variation Better Than Climatic Gradients in the South American Rattlesnake (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Retracing the Response of Rangifer to Postglacial Climate Change in Arctic Islands.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Multiple long-distance dispersals accompanied by reduction of body size shaped the evolutionary history of four spurges (Euphorbia) endemic to Mediterranean islands.Plant biology (Stuttgart, Germany) · 2026Article
- Pliocene Forest Fragmentation Shaped Speciation in Tropical Asia's Giant Squirrels (Ratufa).Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Island Syndrome in the Critically Endangered Lord Howe Island CockroachEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Unraveling the determinants of body size shifts in a rodent species in the Zhoushan Archipelago, China.Oecologia · 2025Article
- Flower size evolution in the Southwest Pacific.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- The Genomic Basis of the Svalbard Reindeer's Adaptation to an Extreme Arctic Environment.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Virtual endocast of the Late MioceneProceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Phenotypic and developmental dissection of an instance of the island rule.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Population genomics of sika deer reveals recent speciation and genetic selective signatures during evolution and domestication.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Population History Across Timescales in an Urban Archipelago.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Island faunas can be characterized by gigantism in small animals and dwarfism in large animals, but the extent to which this so-called 'island rule' provides a general explanation for evolutionary trajectories on islands remains contentious. Here we use a phylogenetic meta-analysis to assess patterns and drivers of body size evolution across a global sample of paired island-mainland populations of terrestrial vertebrates. We show that 'island rule' effects are widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians, which mostly tend towards gigantism. We also found that the magnitude of insular dwarfism and gigantism is mediated by climate as well as island size and isolation, with more pronounced effects in smaller, more remote islands for mammals and reptiles. We conclude that the island rule is pervasive across vertebrates, but that the implications for body size evolution are nuanced and depend on an array of context-dependent ecological pressures and environmental conditions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.