SLOSS debate

In 1975, Jared Diamond suggested some "rules" for the design of protected areas, based on Robert MacArthur and E. O. Wilson's book The Theory of Island Biogeography.

[1] Simberloff and Abele expanded their argument in subsequent paper in the journal The American Naturalist stating neither ecological theory nor empirical data exist to support the hypothesis that subdividing a nature reserve would increase extinction rates, basically negating Diamond as well as MacArthur and Wilson.

[2] The SLOSS debate ensued as to the extent to which smaller reserves shared species with one another, leading to the development of nested subset theory by Bruce D. Patterson and Wirt Atmar in the 1980s and to the establishment of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP) near Manaus, Brazil in 1979 by Thomas Lovejoy and Richard Bierregaard.

In 1986, Michael E. Soulé and Daniel Simberloff proposed that the SLOSS debate was irrelevant and that a three step process was the ideal way to determine reserve size.

[5][6] In the field of metapopulation ecology, modelling works suggest that the SLOSS debate should be refined and cannot be solved without explicit spatial consideration of dispersal and environmental dynamics.