Islands as Phenomena Lecture Series

Although islands only share a 6.7% of the world's surface, the contributed with an outstanding 20% of the global biodiversity. Yet they also comprise 50% of the threatened species and up to a 75% of the species extinctions known since the European expansion throughout the world. Among them, volcanic islands (such as Hawaii, the Canaries, Mascarenes or Galapagos), continental fragments (such as Madagascar, New Zealand or New Caledonia) and tropical land-bridge islands (such as Indonesia, Java, Borneo or New Guinea) are by far the islands with the largest contribution to global biodiversity and also to species threatened or extinct. Islands are thus the place where the sixth mass extinction, the one attributable to human activity, is currently happening.