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Imperial College London
When animals evolve on islands, size doesn't matter
November 20th, 2007
A theory explaining the evolution of giant rodents, miniature elephants, and even miniature humans on islands has been called into questions by new research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The new study refutes the ‘island rule’ which says that in island environments small mammals such as rodents tend to evolve to be larger, and large mammals such as elephants tend to evolve to be smaller, with the original size of the species being the key determining factor in these changes. The new research findings suggest that the tendency to either evolve larger or smaller on islands varies from one group of species to...
Source: Science Letter (2007-11-20)
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