The Hedgehog of the Amazon Summary and Analysis

The theory that one large reserve would support more species than several small ones was challenged in a paper by Dan Simberloff and Lawrence Abele published in 1976. They argued that the theory had not been widely tested, and the conclusions did not always seem to follow from the original equilibrium theory. Abele, who studied heads of coral that supported small contained ecosystems, found that two small coral heads supported more species than one large one of equal area, for example, apparently contradicting the design guidelines. They proposed that competition, the dispersal ability of species and the number of species might all contribute to natural situations where smaller areas might support more species than larger ones.

The paper by Simberloff and Abele set off a raging debate in the field, Quammen explains, with ecologists...