Dynamics of island biodiversity Fifty years ago, MacArthur and Wilson published their influential book, The Theory of Island Biogeography . This work provided a quantitative framework for understanding the ecological processes governing the diversity of species on oceanic islands. Whittaker et al. review the subsequent progress in the field, focusing particularly on the integration of the ecological model with island geophysical dynamics. Recent work is showing how immigration, speciation, and extinction respond to the phases of emergence, development, and submergence in oceanic islands. Science , this issue p. eaam8326