Topic summary
Founder population
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Founder effect.
In island ecology
Founder populations are essential to the study of island biogeography and island ecology. A natural "blank slate" is not easily found, but a classic series of studies on founder population effects was done following the catastrophic 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, which erased all life on the island. Another continuing study has been following the biocolonization of Surtsey, Iceland, a new volcanic island that erupted offshore between 1963 and 1967. An earlier event, the Toba eruption in Sumatra about 73,000 years ago, covered some parts of India with 3–6 m (10–20 ft) of ash, and must have coated the Nicobar Islands and Andaman Islands, much nearer in the ash fallout cone, with life-smothering layers, forcing the restart of their biodiversity.