What drives plant diversity on islands? Insights from macroecology and phylogenetics

Luis Valente, PhD

University of Groningen

Islands are natural laboratories of ecology and evolution. Why are some islands so diverse and others less so? Why are some plant lineages within islands species-rich and others species-poor? Large scale analyses of global patterns of plant diversity (macroecology) and local scale analyses of the evolution of insular plant lineages (phylogenetics) are providing answers to these questions. We will discuss case studies from the Asteraceae family of Hawai’i and hundreds of islands worldwide, and from the Angiosperm flora of the Canary Islands.