The taxon cycle concept was explicitly formulated by biologist E. O. Wilson in 1961[1] after he surveyed the distributions, habitats, behavior and morphology of ant species in the Melanesian archipelago.
[5] Taxon cycles have mainly been described in island settings (archipelagos), where the distributions and movements of species are readily recognized,[6] but may also occur in continental biota.
The ecology and evolution of the Melanesian ants that originally inspired Wilson's hypothesis have since been shown to be consistent with the taxon cycle predictions using modern methods.
[8] Ricklefs & Bermingham (2002)[6] estimated that taxon cycles take place over periods of 0.1-10 million years in different bird groups of the Lesser Antilles islands.
Pepke et al. (2019)[5] used the difference in mean age of late- and early-stage species as a lower estimate (4.7 million years) of the tempo of taxon cycling in an Indo-Pacific bird family.