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Rick Shine, Saint Patrick's Bane, BioScience, Volume 74, Issue 12, December 2024, Pages 883–885, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biae098
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According to Irish legend, Saint Patrick eradicated snakes from the Emerald Isle. Although most people now view that claim that as an early example of fake news, doubtless there are still a few diehard believers. But even the fundamentalists would have to acknowledge that the saint didn't extend his efforts to the myriad other islands that dot the globe. The idea of a tropical island seething with hordes of deadly snakes is a common theme in horror movies, but that same image brings a smile to the faces of snake researchers. For reasons explored at length in this volume, even small and remote islands sometimes support an abundance of snakes, and frequently contain a diverse array of species.
Islands have a special place in the hearts and minds of ecologists and evolutionary biologists, because small isolated landmasses provide extraordinary opportunities to observe “the evolutionary play in the ecological theatre” (Hutchinson 1965) with unparalleled clarity. Island biotas often consist of relatively few species, in relatively uniform habitats, simplifying trophic networks and facilitating research. And even more excitingly, island species sometimes diverge radically from their closest mainland relatives. That situation in the Galapagos famously enabled Charles Darwin to grasp the reality of “descent with modification”—that is, evolution—and island-based research has provided modern-day biologists with many deep insights into fundamental processes of ecology and evolution.
