Island Life “My Island Life” by Luke Harmon focuses on evolutionary diversity, especially on islands, and how one species is transformed from a common ancestor to many varied descendants. To do this, Harmon explains the idea of Wallace’s Line; an imaginary line that separates earth into its major biogeographic provinces. This imaginary line marks the edges of the ranges of many different species and results in regions with distantly related species. Harmon uses this idea of Wallace’s Line to gain insight into the evolution of island lizards. Harmon first studied monitor lizards that were found in the Malay Archipelago. Theses lizards are divided into two clades that include all descendants of a common ancestor. Harmon discovered that all of the species in one clade are found to the west of Wallace’s Line and all species in the other clade are found to the east. This shows that the idea of Wallace’s Line is in fact true and there is a direct relation between evolution and geology. This new idea explains why some species are found in one part of the world but not another. …show more content…
He discovered prehensile-tailed skinks, which have powerful jaws, sharp claws and large prehensile tails. Harmon noticed that these reptiles acted more like mammals in the way that the mothers care for their young, and also aggressively defend their offspring until maturity. There are very few mammals on the island so reptiles have adapted to fill the niche left by the absence of mammals. Harmon discovered that islands enable evolution to interfere in relative isolation and leads to new solutions for ecological