Landscape fragmentation is the process by which habitat isaltered or converted to other habitat types; for example, patchesof forest may be converted to agriculture. As a result, habitatpatches (forest in our example) usually become smaller and spacedfarther apart as fragmentation progresses. Fragmentation has manyeffects on local communities.
This could be due to several reasons, some of which we will discussin class on Thursday. How would MacArthur and Wilson’s EquilibriumTheory of Island Biogeography (ETIB) predict habitat fragmentationshould affect biodiversity within remaining habitat patches?According to the ETIB, why would this result occur?
