View of the Santa Rita Mountains across the Tucson valley from the Santa Catalina Mountains. The Santa Ritas are among the most prominent of the "sky islands" in southern Arizona.The 2,700 m (9,000 ft) Chiricahua Mountains above the desertThe 2,400 m (8,000 ft) Portal Peak in the Chiricahua Mountains surrounded by clouds
Sky islands are isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments. The term originally referred to those found on the Mexican Plateau and has extended to similarly isolated high-elevation forests. The isolation has significant implications for these natural habitats. The American Southwest region began warming up between c. 20,000 and 10,000 years BP and atmospheric temperatures increased substantially, resulting in the formation of vast deserts that isolated the sky islands.[1] Endemism, altitudinal migration, and relict populations are some of the natural phenomena to be found on sky islands.
The complex dynamics of species richness on sky islands draws attention from the discipline of biogeography, and likewise the biodiversity is of concern to conservation biology. One of the key elements of a sky island is separation by physical distance from the other mountain ranges, resulting in a habitat island, such as a forest surrounded by desert.
Some sky islands serve as refugia for boreal species stranded by warming climates since the last glacial period. In other cases, localized populations of plants and animals tend towards speciation, similar to oceanic islands such as the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador.
^Favé, M.-J.; Johnson, R. A. (2015). "Past climate change on Sky Islands drives novelty in a core developmental gene network and its phenotype". BMC Evolutionary Biology. 15 (1): 183. Bibcode:2015BMCEE..15..183F. doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0448-4. PMC 4560157. PMID 26338531.
Skyislands are isolated mountains surrounded by radically different lowland environments. The term originally referred to those found on the Mexican...
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have occurred. Disturbance (ecology) Island ecology Mammals of the Caribbean Patch dynamics Distance decay Skyisland Brown, James H. (1978). "The Theory...
SkyIslands is a jazz album by Ramsey Lewis, released in October 1993 on GRP Records. The album rose to No. 6 on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart....
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