One of the goals of conservation biology is to conserve biodiversity. An important part of conservation strategy is the design of reserves. Reserves are often designed to be as large as possible. How does the theory of island biogeography support biologists' efforts to utilize large reserves in order to conserve as much biodiversity as possible? Species area curves can be used to ensure that populations divided into metapopulations will have at least one large fragment. Species area curves can only be used to determine the number of species that may colonize an area and, in doing so, serve to help predict future species diversity in a habitat patch.