Too simple models may predict the island rule for the wrong reasons.
José Alexandre Felizola Diniz FilhoShai MeiriJoaquin HortalAna M C SantosPasquale RaiaPublished in: Ecology letters (2021)
Biddick & Burns (2021) proposed a null/neutral model that reproduces the island rule as a product of random drift. We agree that it is unnecessary to assume adaptive processes driving island dwarfing or gigantism, but several flaws make their approach unrealistic and thus unsuitable as a stochastic model for evolutionary size changes.
Keyphrases