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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biogeography | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogeography | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:17:13.296244+00:00 | kb-cron |
The publication of The Theory of Island Biogeography by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson in 1967 showed that the species richness of an area could be predicted in terms of such factors as habitat area, immigration rate and extinction rate. This added to the long-standing interest in island biogeography. The application of island biogeography theory to habitat fragments spurred the development of the fields of conservation biology and landscape ecology. 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. 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. See also Oceanic dispersal.
== Modern applications ==
Biogeography now incorporates many different fields including, but not limited to, physical geography, geology, plant biology, zoology, general biology, and modelling. A biogeographer's main focus is on how the environment and humans affect the distribution of species and 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 evolution and advances in knowledge have generated a suite of predictor variables for biogeographic analysis, including global satellite imaging and image processing of the Earth. 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. GIS can show certain processes on the earth's surface like whale locations, sea surface temperatures, and bathymetry. Current scientists also use coral reefs to delve into the history of biogeography through the fossilized reefs. 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) 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), 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. 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) and AquaMaps, which as at 2023 contain modelled distributions for around 200,000 terrestrial, and 33,000 species of teleosts, marine mammals, and invertebrates. 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.
== Paleobiogeography ==