Introduction

Abstract

From the time of Aristotle, biodiversity has been regarded as a central quality of life. Yet only recently has it been made the subject of scientific specialization in its own right, to be measured and evaluated with abstract theory and experimentation. In 1959, G. E. Hutchinson contributed importantly to this end with his now-famous article, “Homage to Santa Rosalia, or Why are there so many kinds of animals?” In the 1960s, the development of the theory of island biogeography offered partial answers to the question posed in the title of Hutchinsondos’s article through the use of models to characterize equilibria of immigration, evolution, and extinction (MacArthur and Wilson 1967). With this work, it became clear that the fundamental properties of biological diversity can be clarified only by judicious and exacting studies that combine systematics and ecology.