Ecological Release

ECOLOGICAL RELEASE--In Naturalist, E. O. Wilson writes... "Literary history was forgotten when I turned my attention to the wilderness that surrounded us. Soon after arriving and before falling ill, I wakled into lush rain forest that reached all the way to the sandy beach, a rarity in the overpopulated tropics. It was home to undisturbeed flocks of parrots and crowing jungle fowl, the wild ancestral species of the domestic chicken. Flying foxes, giant fruit-eating bats, flapped leisurely above the treetops. I soon fixed the affinities of the ant species I found tehre: Melanesian, as expected, Solomon Islands most likely, hence ultimately Asian. I made a general observation on the ecology of these insects that would find a place in my later synthesis of island evolution. It is as follows. Relatively few species of ants inhabit Espiritu Santo: the island is just too distant and geologically young to have received many immigrants. Freed from heavy competition, some of the colonists have dramatically increased their niche; they occur in dense populations across a wide range of local environments and nest sites. I would later call this phenomenon "ecological release," and help to establish it as an important early step in the proliferation of biodiversity."