Modern biogeographic research combines information and ideas from many fields, from the physiological and ecological constraints on organismal dispersal to geological and climatological phenomena operating at global spatial scales and evolutionary time frames.
The short-term interactions within a habitat and species of organisms describe the ecological application of biogeography. Historical biogeography describes the long-term, evolutionary periods of time for broader classifications of organisms.[4] Early scientists, beginning with Carl Linnaeus, contributed to the development of biogeography as a science.
The patterns of species distribution across geographical areas can usually be explained through a combination of historical factors such as: speciation, extinction, continental drift, and glaciation. Through observing the geographic distribution of species, we can see associated variations in sea level, river routes, habitat, and river capture. Additionally, this science considers the geographic constraints of landmass areas and isolation, as well as the available ecosystem energy supplies.[citation needed]
Over periods of ecological changes, biogeography includes the study of plant and animal species in: their past and/or present living refugiumhabitat; their interim living sites; and/or their survival locales.[11] As writer David Quammen put it, "...biogeography does more than ask Which species? and Where. It also asks Why? and, what is sometimes more crucial, Why not?."[12]
Modern biogeography often employs the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to understand the factors affecting organism distribution, and to predict future trends in organism distribution.[13] Often mathematical models and GIS are employed to solve ecological problems that have a spatial aspect to them.[14]
Biogeography is most keenly observed on the world's islands. These habitats are often much more manageable areas of study because they are more condensed than larger ecosystems on the mainland.[15] Islands are also ideal locations because they allow scientists to look at habitats that new invasive species have only recently colonized and can observe how they disperse throughout the island and change it. They can then apply their understanding to similar but more complex mainland habitats. Islands are very diverse in their biomes, ranging from the tropical to arctic climates. This diversity in habitat allows for a wide range of species study in different parts of the world.
One scientist who recognized the importance of these geographic locations was Charles Darwin, who remarked in his journal "The Zoology of Archipelagoes will be well worth examination".[15] Two chapters in On the Origin of Species were devoted to geographical distribution.
History
18th century
The first discoveries that contributed to the development of biogeography as a science began in the mid-18th century, as Europeans explored the world and described the biodiversity of life. During the 18th century most views on the world were shaped around religion and for many natural theologists, the bible. Carl Linnaeus, in the mid-18th century, improved our classifications of organisms through the exploration of undiscovered territories by his students and disciples. When he noticed that species were not as perpetual as he believed, he developed the Mountain Explanation to explain the distribution of biodiversity; when Noah's ark landed on Mount Ararat and the waters receded, the animals dispersed throughout different elevations on the mountain. This showed different species in different climates proving species were not constant.[4] Linnaeus' findings set a basis for ecological biogeography. Through his strong beliefs in Christianity, he was inspired to classify the living world, which then gave way to additional accounts of secular views on geographical distribution.[10] He argued that the structure of an animal was very closely related to its physical surroundings. This was important to a George Louis Buffon's rival theory of distribution.[10]
Closely after Linnaeus, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon observed shifts in climate and how species spread across the globe as a result. He was the first to see different groups of organisms in different regions of the world. Buffon saw similarities between some regions which led him to believe that at one point continents were connected and then water separated them and caused differences in species. His hypotheses were described in his work, the 36 volume Histoire Naturelle, générale et particulière, in which he argued that varying geographical regions would have different forms of life. This was inspired by his observations comparing the Old and New World, as he determined distinct variations of species from the two regions. Buffon believed there was a single species creation event, and that different regions of the world were homes for varying species, which is an alternate view than that of Linnaeus. Buffon's law eventually became a principle of biogeography by explaining how similar environments were habitats for comparable types of organisms.[10] Buffon also studied fossils which led him to believe that the Earth was over tens of thousands of years old, and that humans had not lived there long in comparison to the age of the Earth.[4]
19th century
Following the period of exploration came the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, which attempted to explain the patterns of biodiversity observed by Buffon and Linnaeus. At the birth of the 19th century, Alexander von Humboldt, known as the "founder of plant geography",[4] developed the concept of physique generale to demonstrate the unity of science and how species fit together. As one of the first to contribute empirical data to the science of biogeography through his travel as an explorer, he observed differences in climate and vegetation. The Earth was divided into regions which he defined as tropical, temperate, and arctic and within these regions there were similar forms of vegetation.[4] This ultimately enabled him to create the isotherm, which allowed scientists to see patterns of life within different climates.[4] He contributed his observations to findings of botanical geography by previous scientists, and sketched this description of both the biotic and abiotic features of the Earth in his book, Cosmos.[10]
Augustin de Candolle contributed to the field of biogeography as he observed species competition and the several differences that influenced the discovery of the diversity of life. He was a Swiss botanist and created the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature in his work, Prodromus.[16] He discussed plant distribution and his theories eventually had a great impact on Charles Darwin, who was inspired to consider species adaptations and evolution after learning about botanical geography. De Candolle was the first to describe the differences between the small-scale and large-scale distribution patterns of organisms around the globe.[10]
Several additional scientists contributed new theories to further develop the concept of biogeography. Charles Lyell developed the Theory of Uniformitarianism after studying fossils. This theory explained how the world was not created by one sole catastrophic event, but instead from numerous creation events and locations.[17] Uniformitarianism also introduced the idea that the Earth was actually significantly older than was previously accepted. Using this knowledge, Lyell concluded that it was possible for species to go extinct.[18] Since he noted that Earth's climate changes, he realized that species distribution must also change accordingly. Lyell argued that climate changes complemented vegetation changes, thus connecting the environmental surroundings to varying species. This largely influenced Charles Darwin in his development of the theory of evolution.[10]
Charles Darwin was a natural theologist who studied around the world, and most importantly in the Galapagos Islands. Darwin introduced the idea of natural selection, as he theorized against previously accepted ideas that species were static or unchanging. His contributions to biogeography and the theory of evolution were different from those of other explorers of his time, because he developed a mechanism to describe the ways that species changed. His influential ideas include the development of theories regarding the struggle for existence and natural selection. Darwin's theories started a biological segment to biogeography and empirical studies, which enabled future scientists to develop ideas about the geographical distribution of organisms around the globe.[10]
Alfred Russel Wallace studied the distribution of flora and fauna in the Amazon Basin and the Malay Archipelago in the mid-19th century. His research was essential to the further development of biogeography, and he was later nicknamed the "father of Biogeography". Wallace conducted fieldwork researching the habits, breeding and migration tendencies, and feeding behavior of thousands of species. He studied butterfly and bird distributions in comparison to the presence or absence of geographical barriers. His observations led him to conclude that the number of organisms present in a community was dependent on the amount of food resources in the particular habitat.[10] Wallace believed species were dynamic by responding to biotic and abiotic factors. He and Philip Sclater saw biogeography as a source of support for the theory of evolution as they used Darwin's conclusion to explain how biogeography was similar to a record of species inheritance.[10] Key findings, such as the sharp difference in fauna either side of the Wallace Line, and the sharp difference that existed between North and South America prior to their relatively recent faunal interchange, can only be understood in this light. Otherwise, the field of biogeography would be seen as a purely descriptive one.[4]
20th and 21st century
Schematic distribution of fossils on Pangea according to Wegener
Moving on to the 20th century, Alfred Wegener introduced the Theory of Continental Drift in 1912, though it was not widely accepted until the 1960s.[4] This theory was revolutionary because it changed the way that everyone thought about species and their distribution around the globe. The theory explained how continents were formerly joined in one large landmass, Pangea, and slowly drifted apart due to the movement of the plates below Earth's surface. The evidence for this theory is in the geological similarities between varying locations around the globe, the geographic distribution of some fossils (including the mesosaurs) on various continents, and the jigsaw puzzle shape of the landmasses on Earth. Though Wegener did not know the mechanism of this concept of Continental Drift, this contribution to the study of biogeography was significant in the way that it shed light on the importance of environmental and geographic similarities or differences as a result of climate and other pressures on the planet. Importantly, late in his career Wegener recognised that testing his theory required measurement of continental movement rather than inference from fossils species distributions.[19]
In 1958 paleontologistPaul S. Martin published A Biogeography of Reptiles and Amphibians in the Gómez Farias Region, Tamaulipas, Mexico, which has been described as "ground-breaking"[20]:35 p. and "a classic treatise in historical biogeography".[21]:311 p. Martin applied several disciplines including ecology, botany, climatology, geology, and Pleistocene dispersal routes to examine the herpetofauna of a relatively small and largely undisturbed area, but ecologically complex, situated on the threshold of temperate – tropical (nearctic and neotropical) regions, including semiarid lowlands at 70 meters elevation and the northernmost cloud forest in the western hemisphere at over 2200 meters.[20][21][22]
Classic biogeography has been expanded by the development of molecular systematics, creating a new discipline known as phylogeography. This development allowed scientists to test theories about the origin and dispersal of populations, such as island endemics. For example, while classic biogeographers were able to speculate about the origins of species in the Hawaiian Islands, phylogeography allows them to test theories of relatedness between these populations and putative source populations on various continents, notably in Asia and North America.[15]
Biogeography continues as a point of study for many life sciences and geography students worldwide, however it may be under different broader titles within institutions such as ecology or evolutionary biology.
In recent years, one of the most important and consequential developments in biogeography has been to show how multiple organisms, including mammals like monkeys and reptiles like squamates, overcame barriers such as large oceans that many biogeographers formerly believed were impossible to cross.[25] See also Oceanic dispersal.
Modern applications
Biogeographic regions of Europe
Biogeography now incorporates many different fields including but not limited to physical geography, geology, botany and plant biology, zoology, general biology, and modelling. A biogeographer's main focus is on how the environment and humans affect the distribution of species as well as other manifestations of Life such as species or genetic diversity. Biogeography is being applied to biodiversity conservation and planning, projecting global environmental changes on species and biomes, projecting the spread of infectious diseases, invasive species, and for supporting planning for the establishment of crops. Technological evolving and advances have allowed for generating a whole suite of predictor variables for biogeographic analysis, including satellite imaging and processing of the Earth.[26] Two main types of satellite imaging that are important within modern biogeography are Global Production Efficiency Model (GLO-PEM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GLO-PEM uses satellite-imaging gives "repetitive, spatially contiguous, and time specific observations of vegetation". These observations are on a global scale.[27] GIS can show certain processes on the earth's surface like whale locations, sea surface temperatures, and bathymetry.[28] Current scientists also use coral reefs to delve into the history of biogeography through the fossilized reefs.[citation needed]
Two global information systems are either dedicated to, or have strong focus on, biogeography (in the form of the spatial location of observations of organisms), namely the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF: 2.57 billion species occurrence records reported as at August 2023)[29] and, for marine species only, the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS, originally the Ocean Biogeographic Information System: 116 million species occurrence records reported as at August 2023),[30] while at a national scale, similar compilations of species occurrence records also exist such as the U.K. National Biodiversity Network, the Atlas of Living Australia, and many others. In the case of the oceans, in 2017 Costello et al. analyzed the distribution of 65,000 species of marine animals and plants as then documented in OBIS, and used the results to distinguish 30 distinct marine realms, split between continental-shelf and offshore deep-sea areas.[31]
Since it is self evident that compilations of species occurrence records cannot cover with any completeness, areas that have received either limited or no sampling, a number of methods have been developed to produce arguably more complete "predictive" or "modelled" distributions for species based on their associated environmental or other preferences (such as availability of food or other habitat requirements); this approach is known as either Environmental niche modelling (ENM) or Species distribution modelling (SDM). Depending on the reliability of the source data and the nature of the models employed (including the scales for which data are available), maps generated from such models may then provide better representations of the "real" biogeographic distributions of either individual species, groups of species, or biodiversity as a whole, however it should also be borne in mind that historic or recent human activities (such as hunting of great whales, or other human-induced exterminations) may have altered present-day species distributions from their potential "full" ecological footprint. Examples of predictive maps produced by niche modelling methods based on either GBIF (terrestrial) or OBIS (marine, plus some freshwater) data are the former Lifemapper project at the University of Kansas (now continued as a part of BiotaPhy[32]) and AquaMaps, which as at 2023 contain modelled distributions for around 200,000 terrestrial, and 33,000 species of teleosts, marine mammals and invertebrates, respectively.[32][33] One advantage of ENM/SDM is that in addition to showing current (or even past) modelled distributions, insertion of changed parameters such as the anticipated effects of climate change can also be used to show potential changes in species distributions that may occur in the future based on such scenarios.[34]
Distribution of four Permian and Triassic fossil groups used as biogeographic evidence for continental drift, and land bridging
Paleobiogeography goes one step further to include paleogeographic data and considerations of plate tectonics. Using molecular analyses and corroborated by fossils, it has been possible to demonstrate that perching birds evolved first in the region of Australia or the adjacent Antarctic (which at that time lay somewhat further north and had a temperate climate). From there, they spread to the other Gondwanan continents and Southeast Asia– the part of Laurasia then closest to their origin of dispersal– in the late Paleogene, before achieving a global distribution in the early Neogene.[35] Not knowing that at the time of dispersal, the Indian Ocean was much narrower than it is today, and that South America was closer to the Antarctic, one would be hard pressed to explain the presence of many "ancient" lineages of perching birds in Africa, as well as the mainly South American distribution of the suboscines.[citation needed]
Paleobiogeography also helps constrain hypotheses on the timing of biogeographic events such as vicariance and geodispersal, and provides unique information on the formation of regional biotas. For example, data from species-level phylogenetic and biogeographic studies tell us that the Amazonianteleost fauna accumulated in increments over a period of tens of millions of years, principally by means of allopatric speciation, and in an arena extending over most of the area of tropical South America (Albert & Reis 2011). In other words, unlike some of the well-known insular faunas (Galapagos finches, Hawaiian drosophilid flies, African rift lake cichlids), the species-rich Amazonian ichthyofauna is not the result of recent adaptive radiations.[36]
For freshwater organisms, landscapes are divided naturally into discrete drainage basins by watersheds, episodically isolated and reunited by erosional processes. In regions like the Amazon Basin (or more generally Greater Amazonia, the Amazon basin, Orinoco basin, and Guianas) with an exceptionally low (flat) topographic relief, the many waterways have had a highly reticulated history over geological time. In such a context, stream capture is an important factor affecting the evolution and distribution of freshwater organisms. Stream capture occurs when an upstream portion of one river drainage is diverted to the downstream portion of an adjacent basin. This can happen as a result of tectonic uplift (or subsidence), natural damming created by a landslide, or headward or lateral erosion of the watershed between adjacent basins.[36]
vicariance– the formation of barriers to biotic dispersal and gene flow, that tend to subdivide species and biotas, leading to speciation and extinction; vicariance biogeography is the field that studies these patterns
Comparative biogeography
The study of comparative biogeography can follow two main lines of investigation:[37]
Systematic biogeography, the study of biotic area relationships, their distribution, and hierarchical classification
Evolutionary biogeography, the proposal of evolutionary mechanisms responsible for organismal distributions. Possible mechanisms include widespread taxa disrupted by continental break-up or individual episodes of long-distance movement.
The terms biogeographic unit,[41] biogeographic area[42] can be used for these categories, regardless of rank.
In 2008, an International Code of Area Nomenclature was proposed for biogeography.[43][44][45] It achieved limited success; some studies commented favorably on it, but others were much more critical,[46] and it "has not yet gained a significant following".[47] Similarly, a set of rules for paleobiogeography[48] has achieved limited success.[47][49] In 2000, Westermann suggested that the difficulties in getting formal nomenclatural rules established in this field might be related to "the curious fact that neither paleo- nor neobiogeographers are organized in any formal groupings or societies, nationally (so far as I know) or internationally — an exception among active disciplines."[50]
↑ Lyell, Charles. 1830. Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation. London: John Murray. Volume 1.
↑ Lomolino, Mark V., and Lawrence R. Heaney. 2004. Frontiers of biogeography: new directions in the geography of nature. Sunderland, Mass: Sinauer Associates
↑ Trewick, Steve (2016). "Plate Tectonics in Biogeography". International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp.1–9. doi:10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0638. ISBN9781118786352.
1 2 Adler, Kraig. 2012. Contributions to the History of Herpetology, Vol. III. Contributions to Herpetology Vol. 29. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles. 564 pp. ISBN978-0-916984-82-3
↑ The New Biogeography and its Niche in Physical Geography. D. WATTS Geography, Vol. 63, No. 4, ANNUAL CONFERENCE 1978 (November 1978), pp. 324–337
↑ Stephen D. Prince and Samuel N. Goward. "Global Primary Production: A Remote Sensing Approach" Journal of Biogeography, Vol. 22, No. 4/5, Terrestrial Ecosystem Interactions with Global Change, Volume 2 (Jul. – Sep., 1995), pp. 815–835
↑ Jønsson, Knud A. & Fjeldså, Jon (2006). Determining biogeographical patterns of dispersal and diversification in oscine passerine birds in Australia, Southeast Asia and Africa. Journal of Biogeography33(7): 1155–1165. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2006.01507.x (HTML abstract)
1 2 Lovejoy, N. R., S. C. Willis, & J. S. Albert (2010) Molecular signatures of Neogene biogeographic events in the Amazon fish fauna. Pp. 405–417 in Amazonia, Landscape and Species Evolution, 1st edition (Hoorn, C. M. and Wesselingh, F.P., eds.). London: Blackwell Publishing.
↑ Ebach, M.C., Morrone, J.J. Parenti, L.R. & Viloria Á.L. (2008). International Code of Area Nomenclature. Journal of Biogeography 35 (7): 1153–1157,Archived 2016-09-16 at the Wayback Machine .
↑ Morrone, J. J. (2015). Biogeographical regionalisation of the world: a reappraisal. Australian Systematic Botany 28: 81–90, Morrone, Juan J. (2015). "Biogeographical regionalisation of the world: A reappraisal". Australian Systematic Botany. 28 (3): 81. doi:10.1071/SB14042. S2CID83401946..
Albert, J.S.; Crampton, W.G.R. (2010). "The geography and ecology of diversification in Neotropical freshwaters". Nature Education. 1 (10): 3.
Cox, C. B. (2001). The biogeographic regions reconsidered. Journal of Biogeography, 28: 511–523, .
Ebach, M.C. (2015). Origins of biogeography. The role of biological classification in early plant and animal geography. Dordrecht: Springer, xiv + 173 pp., .
Lieberman, B. S. (2001). "Paleobiogeography: using fossils to study global change, plate tectonics, and evolution". Kluwer Academic, Plenum Publishing, .
Lomolino, M. V., & Brown, J. H. (2004). Foundations of biogeography: classic papers with commentaries. University of Chicago Press, .
McCarthy, Dennis (2009). Here be dragons: how the study of animal and plant distributions revolutionized our views of life and Earth. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-954246-8.
Millington, A., Blumler, M., & Schickhoff, U. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of biogeography. Sage, London, .
Ecology is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely related sciences of biogeography, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, and natural history.
Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models improve understanding of the natural world by revealing how the dynamics of species populations are often based on fundamental biological conditions and processes. Further, the field aims to unify a diverse range of empirical observations by assuming that common, mechanistic processes generate observable phenomena across species and ecological environments. Based on biologically realistic assumptions, theoretical ecologists are able to uncover novel, non-intuitive insights about natural processes. Theoretical results are often verified by empirical and observational studies, revealing the power of theoretical methods in both predicting and understanding the noisy, diverse biological world.
A biogeographic realm is the broadest biogeographic division of Earth's land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms. They are subdivided into bioregions, which are further subdivided into ecoregions. A biogeographic realm is also known as "ecozone", although that term may also refer to ecoregions.
The Wallace line or Wallace's line is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by the English biologist T.H. Huxley that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and 'Wallacea', a transitional zone between Asia and Australia also called the Malay Archipelago and the Indo-Australian Archipelago. To the west of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, a mixture of species of Asian and Australian origins is present. Wallace noticed this clear division in both land mammals and birds during his travels through the East Indies in the 19th century.
Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of genetics, particularly population genetics.
This glossary of ecology is a list of definitions of terms and concepts in ecology and related fields. For more specific definitions from other glossaries related to ecology, see Glossary of biology, Glossary of evolutionary biology, and Glossary of environmental science.
Biological dispersal refers to both the movement of individuals from their birth site to their breeding site, as well as the movement from one breeding site to another . Dispersal is also used to describe the movement of propagules such as seeds and spores. Technically, dispersal is defined as any movement that has the potential to lead to gene flow. The act of dispersal involves three phases: departure, transfer, and settlement. There are different fitness costs and benefits associated with each of these phases. Through simply moving from one habitat patch to another, the dispersal of an individual has consequences not only for individual fitness, but also for population dynamics, population genetics, and species distribution. Understanding dispersal and the consequences, both for evolutionary strategies at a species level and for processes at an ecosystem level, requires understanding on the type of dispersal, the dispersal range of a given species, and the dispersal mechanisms involved. Biological dispersal can be correlated to population density. The range of variations of a species' location determines the expansion range.
Endemism is the state of a species only being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be endemic to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can also be referred to as an endemism or, in scientific literature, as an endemite.. Similarly many species found in the Western ghats of India are examples of endemism.
Evolutionary ecology lies at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology. It approaches the study of ecology in a way that explicitly considers the evolutionary histories of species and the interactions between them. Conversely, it can be seen as an approach to the study of evolution that incorporates an understanding of the interactions between the species under consideration. The main subfields of evolutionary ecology are life history evolution, sociobiology, the evolution of interspecific interactions and the evolution of biodiversity and of ecological communities.
Insular biogeography or island biogeography is a field within biogeography that examines the factors that affect the species richness and diversification of isolated natural communities. The theory was originally developed to explain the pattern of the species–area relationship occurring in oceanic islands. Under either name it is now used in reference to any ecosystem that is isolated due to being surrounded by unlike ecosystems, and has been extended to mountain peaks, seamounts, oases, fragmented forests, and even natural habitats isolated by human land development. The field was started in the 1960s by the ecologists Robert H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson, who coined the term island biogeography in their inaugural contribution to Princeton's Monograph in Population Biology series, which attempted to predict the number of species that would exist on a newly created island.
Zoogeography is the branch of the science of biogeography that is concerned with geographic distribution of animal species.
Species richness, or biodiversity, increases from the poles to the tropics for a wide variety of terrestrial and marine organisms, often referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient. The latitudinal diversity gradient is one of the most widely recognized patterns in ecology. It has been observed to varying degrees in Earth's past. A parallel trend has been found with elevation, though this is less well-studied.
In biogeography, a cosmopolitan distribution is the range of a taxon that extends across most or all of the surface of the Earth, in appropriate habitats; most cosmopolitan species are known to be highly adaptable to a range of climatic and environmental conditions, though this is not always so. Killer whales (orcas) are among the most well-known cosmopolitan species on the planet, as they maintain several different resident and transient (migratory) populations in every major oceanic body on Earth, from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica and every coastal and open-water region in-between. Such a taxon is said to have a cosmopolitan distribution, or exhibit cosmopolitanism, as a species; another example, the rock dove, in addition to having been bred domestically for centuries, now occurs in most urban areas around the world.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ecology:
The Theory of Island Biogeography is a 1967 book by the ecologist Robert MacArthur and the biologist Edward O. Wilson. It is widely regarded as a seminal work in island biogeography and ecology. The Princeton University Press reprinted the book in 2001 as a part of the "Princeton Landmarks in Biology" series. The book popularized the theory that insular biota maintain a dynamic equilibrium between immigration and extinction rates. The book also popularized the concepts and terminology of r/K selection theory.
Tropical ecology is the study of the relationships between the biotic and abiotic components of the tropics, or the area of the Earth that lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The tropical climate experiences hot, humid weather and rainfall year-round. While many might associate the region solely with the rainforests, the tropics are home to a wide variety of ecosystems that boast a great wealth of biodiversity, from exotic animal species to seldom-found flora. Tropical ecology began with the work of early English naturalists and eventually saw the establishment of research stations throughout the tropics devoted to exploring and documenting these exotic landscapes. The burgeoning ecological study of the tropics has led to increased conservation education and programs devoted to the climate. Tropical ecology provides a wealth of natural resources to humans, this includes contributing to the carbon cycle, with the ability to store 50% of carbon emissions as well as turnover 40% of global oxygen. However, despite the natural services provided by tropical ecology, deforestation is a threat of tropical rainforests. Any plant of interest can be exploited for commercial reasons and extraction of these specific plant species can be at a rapid rate without time for healthy regeneration. Most of the global plant biodiversity is hosted in tropical areas, however studies in this area is mostly covered by scientist from Northern countries. Inclusion of scientist from countries where rainforest is present is heavily encouraged because it extends global knowledge and research which advances scientific contributions, benefiting tropical ecology.
The body size-species richness distribution is a pattern observed in the way taxa are distributed over large spatial scales. The number of species that exhibit small body size generally far exceed the number of species that are large-bodied. Macroecology has long sought to understand the mechanisms that underlie the patterns of biodiversity, such as the body size-species richness pattern.
Ecological fitting is "the process whereby organisms colonize and persist in novel environments, use novel resources or form novel associations with other species as a result of the suites of traits that they carry at the time they encounter the novel condition". It can be understood as a situation in which a species' interactions with its biotic and abiotic environment seem to indicate a history of coevolution, when in actuality the relevant traits evolved in response to a different set of biotic and abiotic conditions.
In biogeography and paleontology, a relict is a population or taxon of organisms that was more widespread or more diverse in the past. A relictual population is a population currently inhabiting a restricted area whose range was far wider during a previous geologic epoch. Similarly, a relictual taxon is a taxon which is the sole surviving representative of a formerly diverse group.
Microbial biogeography is a subset of biogeography, a field that concerns the distribution of organisms across space and time. Although biogeography traditionally focused on plants and larger animals, recent studies have broadened this field to include distribution patterns of microorganisms. This extension of biogeography to smaller scales—known as "microbial biogeography"—is enabled by ongoing advances in genetic technologies.
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