  Nevertheless, in the 1970s, island biogeography began to be viewed as a model for biological reserves which, by being surrounded by anthropogenically transformed lands, were supposed to be similar to islands—see the entry on  conservation biology.  The initially prevalent view, based on island biogeography theory, was that reserves should be as large as  possible.[66]  In particular, one conclusion drawn from island biogeography theory was that “[i]n cases where one large area is infeasible, it must be realized that several smaller ones, adding up to the same total area as the single large one, are not biogeographically equal to it: they will tend to support a smaller species  total.”[67]  Though this conclusion was incorporated into the design of the World Conservation Strategy of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, there was almost no data that ever supported  it.[68]  It was also challenged by Simberloff and Abele on both theoretical and empirical  grounds.[69]  Among other things they pointed out that several small reserves may increase the probability of the survival of species in the face of environmental stochasticity, for instance, random catastrophes such as outbreaks of infectious disease. This objection sparked the SLOSS (Single Large or Several Small) debate about the design of biological reserve networks. The SLOSS debate dominated discussions of reserve network design for about a decade. Meanwhile the species-area curve also began to generate serious skepticism. Soulé et al. predicted in 1979 from a model based on the species-area curve that the Serengeti National Park of Tanzania will lose 50% of its large mammals (15 ungulate species) in 250  years.[70]  However, once Western and Ssemakula incorporated habitat diversity data in 1981, it appeared that only 1 such species will go  extinct.[71]  There are many other such examples and it is hard not to sympathize with Zimmerman and Bierregard who observe that, besides the ecological truism that species richness increases with area, there is little of value in the species-area curve (and the theory of island  biogeography).[72]  In the context of biodiversity conservation, the relevance of the species-area curve, and island biogeography, has never been uncontroversially accepted. Important early criticism of the use of island biogeography theory for reserve network design came from Margules and several collaborators in  1982.[73]  They pointed out that the theory was yet to be empirically established in the field, that biological reserves were not very similar to islands because landscapes between reserves were not completely uninhabitable by the species in the reserves (unlike the case of oceans separating islands), that habitats are largely heterogeneous rather than homogeneous (as assumed in the theory), and that species richness should not be the only criterion used to select reserves. By 1986, it became clear that there would be no winner in the SLOSS debate; since then there has been no unequivocal role for island biogeography theory to play in the design of biodiversity reserve  networks.[74]  (For more on these issues, see the entry on   conservation biology.)