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Science 16 November 2001:
Vol. 294. no. 5546, p. 1413
DOI: 10.1126/science.294.5546.1413f
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This Week in Science
Catastrophic events such as hurricanes can provide large-scale, ready-made experiments in ecology (see the Perspective by Brooks and Smith). Schoener et al. (p. 1525) document the effects of a massive hurricane on the occurrence of a common lizard species on 66 islands in the Bahamas archipelago. Before the hurricane, island area was the best predictor of the presence of lizard populations. Just after the hurricane had passed, altitude was the better predictor, but during the next 2 years, island area gradually resumed its dominance. Restoration of the species-area distribution resulted from overwater dispersal and from hatching of eggs that survived inundation during the hurricane. In a separate biogeographical contribution, Ricklefs and Bermingham (p. 1522) examined the dynamics of landbird species composition in the Lesser Antilles over an evolutionary time scale. Periodic catastrophic events have effectively prevented an equilibrium between colonization and extinction, and thus the bird fauna has never been in a steady state.
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)
