Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 4 July 1975:
Vol. 189. no. 4196, pp. 13 - 17
DOI: 10.1126/science.189.4196.13
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Biogeography of the Megazoo

Biogeographic studies suggest organizing principles for a future system of wild lands

Arthur L. Sullivan 1 and Mark L. Shaffer 1

1 School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706

A system of primary wildland reserves may be required to ensure a diversity of plant and animal species in the future. A strategy for locating such reserves involves considerations of their location, number, size, and linkage. The equilibrium theory of island biogeography is a useful analytical tool for predicting future biogeographies according to the dynamics of present plant and animal distributions. Existing reserves in the United States are inadequate in size and number and are clumped in one geographic region. In a planned network there might be several levels of reserves, starting with first- and second-order watersheds of large enough size to support a stable population of large carnivores. Reserves should be distributed so that they include a maximum of the world's biological diversity. Lower-order reserves might serve as stepping-stones among which a supply of species might move as a kind of distributed storage and reintroduce themsleves when local instabilities occur. This would maintain a high immigration rate to balance an extinction rate which can only increase as human settlements expand.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Species Turnover and Equilibrium Island Biogeography.
D. Simberloff (1976)
Science 194, 572-578
   PDF »
Island Biogeography Theory and Conservation Practice.
D. S. SIMBERLOFF and L. G. ABELE (1976)
Science 191, 285-286
   Abstract »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)