Talk:Island gigantism

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I think this page and island dwarfing need to be tied together with a little context and should refer to each other in the main body of text. Can anyone take a crack at that? I don't think I'm qualified. bikeable (talk) 17:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

We should make an "In Popular Culture" section for this page, and mention the animals in the King Kong movies. Hehe.  :) King nothing 2 09:45, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

It is by no means certain that Giant tortoises, and many of the other examples listed, represent island gigantism, but instead island refugia. Even larger tortoises inhabited most continental landmasses until the pleistocene, when they became extinct, perhaps due to human predation. Thus these could even be examples of island dwarfism. Regardless the tortoises that colonized the Galagagos and other island systems were likely already giant, a feature which aided in this colonization event (PNAS Caccone et al. 96 (23): 13223). You would need to be relatively certain that the original colonizers of the islands were smaller species which subsequently evolved larger size in order to label it island gigantism. The same may apply to the ratites, komodo dragon, and the weta. Beseekay 06:36, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This makes no sense!

Why would creatures grow larger in a smaller environment? Food would runout and it would be harder to hide. It would be more efficient to become smaller.

-G

The article already answers this question. The creatures don't simply "grow larger", they evolve. A mutation's popularity is typically determined by how well it's able to reproduce within its environment, this is known as natural selection. In situations where a predator is not present, sexual selection leads to mutations that display more contrast against their environment becoming more popular, and a phenomenon known as Bergmann's Rule leads to gigantism. Observations of both these scenarios have been well documented. However, there are exceptions to this phenomenon; for example, you may be interested to learn about Insular dwarfism. Hope that helps.

jdbartlett (talk) 11:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)