2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

of the Mechanism Underlying the Island Rule : A Case Study of the Birds of the Southern Ryukyus.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	20770070
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Biodiversity/Systematics
Research Institution	Yamashina Institute for Ornithology
Principal Investigator	YAMASAKI Takeshi Yamashina Institute for Ornithology, 自然誌研究室, 研究員 (70390755)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2011
Keywords	進化 / 種分化 / 島の規則 / 体サイズ / 鳥類
Research Abstract	Corvus macrorhynchos is one example of species following the island rule. The southern Ryukyus population as a whole has a much smaller body size than the neighboring Taiwanese population. In this case study, I conducted morphological, ecological and genetic examinations on four island populations in the Southern Ryukyus and compared them with the putative ancestral population in Taiwan. Although the studied islands were located very close to each other, there were found remarkable differences in morphology, ecology and genetics. In the Southern Ryukyus, the most massively dwarfed was the population ecologically the most similar to the ancestral Taiwanese population.