Distributional Ecology of Selected Plants and Animals on Trinidad's Five Islands Archipelago

Abstract

Studies of the distributions of island-dwelling species have expanded our understanding of the factors that determine the structure and composition of island communities. Several generalities have emerged (Gorman 1979). All else being equal, there are fewer species on an island than on a comparable mainland area of the same size; the number of species on an island increases in a predictable way with increasing island area; the number of species on an island increases as habitat diversity on an island increases; the number of species on an island may be in a dynamic equilibrium; and the species found on islands are a non-random subset of the nearby continental biota.