Biogeography People

Aristotle/Greeks

first to record diversity of organisms

Linnaeus

classification (binomial); species immutable

Buffon

species change/adapt; Buffon’s Law (different regions = different species)

Forster

applied Buffon’s Law to plants; island biogeography

Humboldt

Father of phytogeography; elevation = latitude patterns

Lyell

earth very old; uniformitarianism (slow changes)

Darwin

natural selection; dispersal explains species spread

Hooker

plant affinities; land bridges for disjunct species

Sclater

six biogeographic regions

Wallace

father of zoogeography; mapped animal regions; co-discovered natural selection

Merriam

coined “biogeography”; life zones (mountains = latitude)

Bergmann

rule: colder = smaller extremities

Allen

rule: color = smaller extremities

Cope

rule: mammals increase body size over time

Gloger

rule: humid = darker animals

1970s

biogeography became its own field

1973

journal of biogeography

2000

international biogeography society