We are delighted that Diniz-Filho et al. agree with the main premise of our paper, and we welcome their critique, as constructive debate will help foster a better understanding of size evolution on islands. Our perspective on each of their criticisms is discussed in greater detail below.

In the paper Clark et al. (2021), the two references, for Lande (1993) and Turelli (1986), were included as in-line citations in the original publication, but not in the reference list. We are grateful to G. Simpson for bringing this point to our attention. The full citations for these references are: Lande, R. (1993). Risks of Population Extinction from Demographic and Environmental Stochasticity

Biddick & Burns (2021) proposed a null/neutral model that reproduces the island rule as a product of random drift. We agree that it is unnecessary to assume adaptive processes driving island dwarfing or gigantism, but several flaws make their approach unrealistic and thus unsuitable as a stochastic model for evolutionary size changes.

Chen et al. (Ecology Letters, 2021, 24, 1018) concluded that plant input governs topsoil carbon persistence in alpine grasslands. We demonstrated that the excluded direct effect of precipitation on topsoil Δ14C in their analysis was significant and strong. Our results provide an alternative viewpoint on the drivers of soil carbon turnover.