Of Brobdingnag and Lilliput, or how the area of an island may determine the size of the bodies and genomes that inhabit it, along with their mutation rates

There are some disputed hypotheses for the recurrent observations of insular gigantism and dwarfism, like the island rule: small organisms would become larger on islands, while large organisms would become smaller. But, why is the latter? In addition, not all the observations fit this rule. Here I propose a causal model. Following the Island Biogeography Theory (IBT), insular aspects influence the census N . Observations suggest that variation in N is associated with variation in effective population size ( N _e ). The body size of insular colonisers might change, following Damuth’s law, as N _e can decrease at a differential rate from the island area A , resulting in a distinctive effective density . Interestingly, a prediction of the drift-barrier hypothesis is that N _e is affecting mutation rates. Consequently, body mass, genome size and µ may be predicted to some extent by island area, as they are influenced by D _e and N _e . Falsification of the latter hypothesis is feasible by determining changes in genomic features of insular species. We now have the opportunity to interrogate the extensive data available. Here I ask: (i) How is decreasing island area predicting average body sizes? (ii) To which levels does this prediction apply (species, cells, genomes)? (iii) How well does the model fare on predicting µ over paradigmatic case studies? The resolution of these questions may provide a more reliable diagnosis of the evolutionary causes for somatic size variation.