Speciation is the process by which co-existing daughter species evolve from one ancestral species - e.g., humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas arising from a common ancestor around 5,000,000 years ago. However, many questions about speciation remain controversial. The Birds of Northern Melanesia provides by far the most comprehensive study yet available of a rich fauna, composed of the 195 breeding land and fresh-water bird species of the Bismarck and Solomon Archipelagoes east of New Guinea. This avifauna offers decisive advantages for understanding speciation, and includes famous examples of geographic variation discussed in textbooks of evolutionary biology. The book results from 30 years of collaboration between the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and the ecologist Jared Diamond. It shows how Northern Melanesian bird distributions provide snapshots of all stages in speciation, from the earliest (widely distributed species without geographic variation) to the last (closely related, reproductively isolated species occurring sympatrically and segregating ecologically). The presentation emphasizes the wide diversity of speciation outcomes, steering a middle course between one-model-fits-all simplification and ungeneralizable species accounts. Questions illuminated include why some species are much more prone to speciate than others, why some water barriers are much more effective at promoting speciation than others, and whether hypothesized taxon cycles, faunal dominance, and legacies of Pleistocene land bridges are real. These years of study have resulted in a huge database, complete with distributions of all 195 species on 76 islands, together with their taxonomy, colonization routes, ecological attributes, abundance, and overwater dispersal. Color plates depict 88 species and allospecies, many of which have never been seen before. For students of speciation, Northern Melanesian birds now constitute a model system against which other biotas can be compared. For population biologists interested in other problems besides speciation, this rich database can now be mined for insights.

Origins and Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1. Northern Melanesia's Physical and Biological Environment 1. Geology and geological history 2. Climate 3. Habitats and vegetation 4. Terrestrial vertebrates other than birds Part 2. Human History and Impacts 5. Human history 6. Ornithological exploration of Northern Melanesia 7. Exterminations of bird populations Part 3. The Northern Melanesia Avifauna 8. Family composition 9. Determinants of island species number 10. Level of endemism, habitat preference, and abundance of each species 11. Overwater dispersal ability of each species 12. Distributional ecology Part 4. Colonization Routes 13. Proximate origins of Northern Melanesian populations 14. Upstream colonization and faunal dominance 15. Ultimate origins of Northern Melanesian populations Part 5. Taxonomic Analysis: Differences among Species 16. The problem of speciation 17. Stages of geographic speciation among the birds of Northern Melanesia 18. Absence of geographic variation 19. Geographic variation: subspecies 20. Geographic variation: megasubspecies 21. Geographic variation: allospecies 22. Complete speciation 23. Hybridization 24. Endemic species and genera Part 6. Geographical Analysis: Differences among Islands 25. Endemism index 26. Pair-wise differentiation index 27. Pair-wise non-sharing indices: differences in island species compositions 28. The establishment of geographic isolates 29. Inter-archipelagal barriers 30. Barriers within the Bismarcks 31. Barriers within the Solomons 32. Speciation on fragmented Solomon islands 33. Differential extinction and species occurrences on fragmented Pleistocene islands Part 7. Synthesis, Conclusions, and Prospects 34. Conclusions about speciation 35. Species differences: taxon cycles, and the evolution of dispersal 36. Promising directions for future research Maps Appendices References Index

Ernst MayrAlexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology (Emeritus), Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Jared DiamondProfessor of Physiology, UCLA Medical Center

"Clearly, The Birds of Northern Melanesia represents a labor of love by the authors, who sink their teeth into a rich subject. In doing so, they follow the analytic approach that they have previously shown to be so productive." -- Bruce M. Beehler, Science |k No