The Man Who Knew Islands Summary and Analysis

Quammen begins his examination of island biogeography by briefly introducing some of the key figures in its development. Island biogeography is important, he explains, because the small size of the ecosystems on islands make the evolutionary processes very pronounced. It is a field that was around even before the subject had a formal name. Charles Darwin, one of the developers of the theory of natural selection based his ideas on data collected from island species in the Galapagos Islands in the 1850s, Quammen notes. At the same time Darwin was developing his theory, a man named Alfred Wallace was coming to the same conclusions while studying island species in the Malay Archipelago. This started a trend in island studies that continued for the next hundred years.

In 1967, an important book was published entitled...