Evidence map›Paper›PMID 39237760›Full record

ArticleNature ecology & evolution2024

Islands are engines of language diversity.

Lindell Bromham, Keaghan J Yaxley, Marcel Cardillo

Abstract read
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In one paragraph

Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. An inverse correlation between structural linguistic and human genetic diversity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Lindell BromhamMacroevolution and Macroecology, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. Lindell.Bromham@anu.edu.au.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2202-2609
Keaghan J YaxleyMacroevolution and Macroecology, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6091-8794
Marcel CardilloMacroevolution and Macroecology, Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9855-0817

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Islands have played a prominent role in evolutionary and ecological theory, centring the theoretical framework for understanding biodiversity in terms of isolation and area and providing 'laboratories' of evolutionary change and adaptive radiation. However, a similar role for islands in understanding global language diversity has not been established, even though one-sixth of the world's languages are spoken on islands which account for <1% of the inhabited land area. The striking diversity of island languages remains largely unexplained. We construct a global database which reveals that 10% of the world's languages are endemic to islands (landmasses <11,000 km

Indexed as

IslandsLanguageBiodiversityCultural EvolutionHumans

Identifiers

PMID39237760

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.