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BIOGEOGRAPHY
GEO 4300/5305
The Science and History of Biogeography
Lecture 2 – 8 January 2015
Last Time
• Introduction – Biogeography?
– The Science of Biogeography
• Major questions
• Methods
– Why Geography instead of Biology?
• About spatial heterogeneity
• Significant overlap but different perspectives
• This Class – the Semester
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Objectives
Logistics
Evaluation
Schedule
• Reading: Chapter 1 & 2 in Lomolino et al.
This Time 8 January
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Who are You?
History of Biogeography;
Organization of Life
Systematics and Biological Nomenclature
Perhaps: The Environmental Setting
Who are you?
• Name
• Undergrad/Grad
• What are you studying? (and
thesis/dissertation topic for grad students)
• Background in geography
• Background in biology
• What do you want to do when you graduate?
Primary Question of Biogeography
• How and why does biological diversity vary
over the surface of the Earth?
Topics and Subdisciplines of
Biogeography
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Natural History Zoogeography
Vegetation geography
Floristic phytogeography
Macroevolution paleontology
Panbiogeography
Cladistic/vicariance
biogeography
Systematist/phylogenetic
biogeography
Island biogeography
Biodiversity
Metapopulation biology
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Spatial modelers
Spatial ecology
Animal dispersal
Speciation
Population genetics/evolution
Landscape ecology
Wildlands/conservation
Climatology
Paleoecology
Ethnobiology
And anything else that is
concerned with the
distribution and abundance of
organisms on Earth’s surface.
Biogeography
in the News
Biogeography in the News
• The biggest factor determining species diversity and
distribution on islands is not size and isolation, as
traditional island biogeography theory states, but
economics. Simply put, the more trade an island is
engaged in, the more boats visit it, and with more
boats comes more hitchhikers.
A study published in Nature this week examines the
species distribution of Anolis lizards throughout the
Caribbean islands, finding that their pattern of
colonization is exactly the opposite of what traditional
island biogeography theory would predict.
Theory of Ecology is Biogeography
• One view: In ecology, the scientific domain is spatial and
temporal patterns of distribution and abundance. Eight
fundamental principles attend this domain:
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organisms are distributed heterogeneously in space and time
all organisms interact with their biotic and abiotic environments
the distribution of organisms and their interactions are susceptible
to contingency
environmental conditions are heterogeneous in space and time
resources are finite and heterogeneous in space and time
birth and death rates result from interactions with abiotic, biotic
environments
ecological properties of populations are the consequence of
evolution
individual variation predominates
History of Biogeography
Overview
• Accumulation of Species
Distribution Information
• Theory of Evolution
• Plate Tectonics
• Theoretical, Empirical, and
Technological Advances
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Island Biogeography - 1967
Cladistics/Vicariance
Biodiversity interest
Rise of Conservation
Remote Sensing/GIS
Phylogenetics and distinct
evolutionary lineages
Time
• Pre-13th Century
• The Age of Exploration
• Biogeography of the 19th
Century
– Four British Scientists
– Other Contributions of the 19th
Century
• The First Half of the 20th
Century
• Biogeography since the 1950s
Early
• Pre-15th Century
– Greek
• Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Theophrastus (c. 370-287 BCE),
Virgil (70-19 BCE - Aeneid )
– Roman
• Roman Empire – administration, agriculture, written
records
http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/
The Age of Exploration, Age of
Discovery
• European: Written accounts of travels to
Asia
– Giovanni da Pian del Carpine (c. 1180 – 1252)
journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241–
1247.
– Marco Polo (1254-1324/1325) journeyed
throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295, in the
court of Kublai Khan of Cathay.
– Trade with the “East” led to exploration by
both land and sea – reports of fantastic beasts
and strange environments
Travels of Marco Polo
1600 - 1850 "Age of Reason" Linnaeus, Buffon,
Lamarck, Lyell
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Linnaeus (1707-1778):
Noachan deluge Plants and
Animals spread from Mount
Ararat (Turkey)
Elevational Zones of Ararat
are origins of "biomes"
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Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (17071788): spread from the Arctic
Buffon's Law: distant regions with similar
climate (& similar-appearing vegetation)
have different animal species
– Mediterranean climate - biome
– Monsoonal climate - biome
– Climate and Species are changeable
1600 - 1850 "Age of Reason" Linnaeus, Buffon,
Lamarck, Lyell
• Sir Charles Lyell (1797 - 1875): author of The Geological
Evidence of the Antiquity of Man in 1863 and Principles
of Geology (12 editions).
• Presently observable geological processes were
adequate to explain geological history.
Uniformitarianism, not book of Genesis!
• Vast time scale for Earth's history.
• Major influence on Charles Darwin
• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829)
• Changes in the organic, as well as in the
inorganic world, being the result of law, and
not of miraculous interposition.
• Forerunner of evolution.
• Also author of discredited theory of evolution
by inheritance of acquired characteristics.
The Age of Exploration
• Johann Reinhold Forster (1729 - 1798)
Cook's 2nd Expedition 1778
• Global biotic regions (plants)
• Higher species diversity in tropics
• Species diversity correlated with island size
• Alexander von Humboldt (17691859): Plant Vegetation types strongly
correlated with local climate
• Elevational Vegetation Zones (Andes)
• Latitudinal Belts of Vegetation
1850 - 1900 Evolution by Natural
Selection, but pre-Plate Tectonics
• Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Evolution through Natural
Selection: The Origin of Species
in 1859.
• Theoretical Framework for
Biotic Patterns in Space and
Time
• Fundamental to all
Biology
• Also a barnacle, coral, and
earthworm expert.
1850 - 1900 Evolution by Natural
Selection, but pre-Plate Tectonics
• Alfred Russel Wallace
(1823-1913)
– Biotic Regions similar to
Sclater's
– Originator of
Zoogeography
• Distance not equal
taxonomic similarity
• Integrated geological,
fossil, evolutionary
information
• Considered paleoclimate
influences distributions
17 Biogeographic Principles Advocated
by Alfred Russel Wallace
• See Lomolino et al. page 33, Box 2.1
• Still the basis of much of biogeography today,
but with the addition of plate tectonics and
genetics.
Hooker and Sclater
• Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817 – 1911)
– Asst. Surgeon and Botanist on Ross Expedition to
southern hemisphere (1839 – 1843)
– First proposed “breaking up of a continuous tract
of land”
– Director of Kew Botanical Gardens
– Drew analogy between montane and island floras
• Phillip Lutley Sclater (1829-1913) Five Terrestrial
biotic regions (for birds)
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Palearctic
Aethiopian
Indian
Neotropical
Nearctic
Australasian
• Six Marine regions (marine mammals)
Nineteenth Century “Name" Rules
(Laws)
• C.W.L. Golger (1833) within a species, individuals in
moist climates are darker
• C. Bergmann (1847) for warm blooded animals, those
in colder climates are larger
• J.A. Allen ( 1878) for warm blooded animals, those in
colder climates have shorter limbs and appendages
• E.D. Cope (1887)(orthogenesis vs. G.G. Simpson)
groups tend in one direction, e.g., larger body size with
time
• Guthrie-Geist (20th Century '85 '87) for larger
mammals, more food yields larger animals (island
dwarfing)
Late Nineteenth Century
• C. Hart Merriam (1884)
– Life Zones
– Elevation and Latitudinal (cf. Alexander von
Humboldt)
– Arizona, S. Idaho
• Asa Gray (botanist)
– disjunctions: taxonomically similar groups
distantly separated
Merriam's Life Zones
See also Fig. 2.12 in
Lomolino et al.
Biogeography after 19th Century
• The big question was: How did the world get
this way?
The First Half of the 20th Century
• C. Raunkiaer (1934) - Ecological classification (vs. taxonomic)
– Therophytes
– Geophytes
– Epiphytes
• A. L. Wegener (1910) ; Drummond Matthews and Fred Vine (1963)
– Continental Drift (Plate Tectonics)
• Ernst Mayr (1904-2004) - genetics
– Biological species concept
(potentially interbreeding to produce fertile offspring)
– Allopatric speciation
(arising through geographic isolation)
• Centers of Origin - current patterns
– George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) Paleontologist
– Philip J. Darlington (1904-1983) Zoologist
Biogeography since the 1950s
(technological revolution, ecology, paleontology)
• Plate Tectonics
– Magnetometers; deep sea drilling
– sonar, submarines
• L. Croizat (1958) vicariance biogeography:
disjunction of multiple species due to the growth
of barriers
• R. H. MacArthur and E. O. Wilson (1963) Island
Biogeography
• Technological Advances
– radiometric dating
– GIS and Remote Sensing – The entire Earth can be
imaged synoptically
– Genomics – evolutionary linkages
Need for Biogeography in
Conservation, Climate Change
• Species Diversity function of overlapping
species ranges.
Ladle, Richard J., and Robert J.
Whittaker, eds. Conservation
Biogeography. Chichester, UK:
Wiley, 2011.
• As climate changes, environmental conditions
change.
Organization of Life
• Levels of Functional Organization
• Biological Systematics and Taxonomic Levels
Hierarchical Levels of Functional
Organization
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Subatomic Particles
Atoms
Molecules
Cell organelles
Cells
Tissues
Organs
Organism
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Population
Community
Ecosystem
Landscape
Biosphere
Earth
Taxonomic Levels of Biological
Organization - Linnaean
TAXON (plural TAXA)
• Domains*
• Kingdom
• Phylum (Division for
plants and Fungi)
• Class
• Order
• Family
• Genus (plural Genera)
• Species (singular AND
plural)
Carolus Linnaeus (1707 — 1778)
Systema Naturae published 1758
*Not Linnaean
Binomial
Nomenclature
Pinus elliottii
Homo sapiens
Pan troglodytes
Genus name +
specific epithet
= Species name
Domain and Kingdom
Three Domains: Archaea, Bacteria (Eubacteria), and Eukaryota (all
eukaryotic groups: Protista, Plantae, Fungi, and Animalia)
Purves et al., Life: The Science of Biology, 4th Edition. Sinauer Associates
Taxonomy of Humans
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Domain: Eukarya (organisms which have cells with a nucleus)
Kingdom: Animalia (with eukaryotic cells having cell membrane but lacking cell wall,
multicellular, heterotrophic)
Phylum: Chordata (animals with a notochord, dorsal nerve cord, and pharyngeal gill
slits, which may be vestigial or embryonic)
Subphylum: Vertebrata (possessing a backbone, which may be cartilaginous, to
protect the dorsal nerve cord)
Class: Mammalia (endothermic vertebrates with hair and mammary glands which, in
females, secrete milk to nourish young)
Cohort: Placentalia (giving birth to live young after a full internal gestation period)
Order: Primates (collar bone, eyes face forward, grasping hands with fingers)
Suborder: Anthropoidea (monkeys, including apes, including humans; as opposed
to the lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers)
Infraorder: Catarrhini (Old World anthropoids)
Superfamily: Hominoidae (apes, including humans)
Family: Hominidae (great apes, including humans)
Genus: Homo
Species: Homo sapiens (high forehead, well-developed chin, gracile bone structure)
Why Scientific Names?
• Amia calva L.
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Amiiformes
Family: Amiidae
Genus: Amia
Species: Amia calva L.
• Bowfin in most of U.S.
• beaverfish, blackfish, cottonfish, cypress trout,
freshwater dogfish, grindle, grinnel, John A. Grindle,
lawyer, marshfish, scaled ling, speckled cat, and
western mudfish. Choupique is a common name
used in Louisiana that was derived from the Choctaw
name for bowfin.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/Gallery/
Descript/Bowfin/Bowfin.html
What is a Species?
• Species are the fundamental taxonomic units of
biological classification. Environmental laws are framed
in terms of species. Even our conception of human
nature is affected by our understanding of species.
• Ernst Mayr: all the individual organisms of a natural
population that generally interbreed at maturity in the
wild and whose interbreeding produces fertile
offspring.
• But there are problems with this definition.
• After thousands of years of use, the concept remains
central to biology and a host of related fields, and yet
also remains at times ill-defined.
• "Right now we can only guess that the correct answer
for the total number of species worldwide lies between
2 and 100 million," Michael Rosenzweig.
What is a Species?
Systematics and Biological
Nomenclature
• Rules set by International Commissions
• International Commission on Zoological
Nomenclature (ICZN)
– http://www.iczn.org/
• International Code of Botanical Nomenclature
– http://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/Sai
ntLouis/0001ICSLContents.htm
Some general rules for nomenclature
1. All taxa must belong to a higher taxonomic
group.
2. The first name to be validly and effectively
published has priority.
3. All taxa must have an author. When you see a
scientific name such as Homo sapiens L., the
L. stands for Linneus, who first described and
named that organism. Most scientists must
have their names spelled out, for example
Libopollis jarzenii Farabee et al.
Next Time
• Environmental Setting:
– Energy
– Atmospheric Circulation Patterns
– Climatic Regions of the World
– Soils
• Parent Materials
• Soil Formation
– Aquatic Environments
– Microenvironments