with Extant Substitutes

vertebrates, and hence their species interactions, were lost relatively recently [5], because the simplicity of island ecosys-tems facilitates assessments of the impact of taxon substitutes are easy to employ and monitor in small-scale, reversible rewilding projects [10, 11]. We chose the Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) as our taxon substitute because of Please cite this article in press as: Griffiths et al., Resurrecting Extinct Interactions with Extant Substitutes, Current Biology (2011), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.03.042endemic slow-growing hardwood Diospyros egrettarumwere kept in a 1-hectare pen, where preliminary surveys indi-cated no significant detrimental impact on the indigenous*Correspondence