History of Biogeography

Who first recorded info about organisms and their diversity?

Aristotle & early Greeks

Who created binomial classification and thought species were unchanging?

Carolus Linnaeus

Who said species change/adapt, life started in the north, and made Buffon’s Law?

Comte de Buffon

Who applied Buffon’s Law to plants and studied island biogeography?

Johann Reinhold Forster

Who is the “Father of phytogeography” and compared elevation zones to latitude?

Alexander von Humboldt

Who showed Earth is very old and changes slowly (uniformitarianism)?

Charles Lyell

Who explained evolution by natural selection and long-distance dispersal?

Charles Darwin

Who studied plants in the southern continents and used land bridges to explain disjunct species?

Joseph Dalton Hooker

Who proposed 6 main biogeographic regions of the world?

Philip Lutley Sclater

Who is the “Father of zoogeography” and co-discovered natural selection?

Alfred Russel Wallace

Who coined “biogeography” and showed mountain life zones = latitude zones?

C. Hart Merriam

Whose rule says cold-climate animals are larger, warm-climate animals smaller?

Carl Bergmann (Bergmann’s Rule)

Whose rule says animals in cold climates have smaller extremities (ears, tails)?

Joel Allen (Allen’s Rule)

Whose rule says mammal lineages tend to get bigger over time?

Edward Cope (Cope’s Rule)

Whose rule says animals in humid areas are darker than those in dry areas?

Gloger (Gloger’s Rule)

When did biogeography become its own field of study?

1970s

What journal started in 1973?

Journal of Biogeography

What society was founded in 2000?

International Biogeography Society

What were the main 1900s advances?

Better understanding of dispersal, extinction, plate tectonics, continental drift, phylogenetics, and ecological data.