Biogeography

K.L. Goodyear
 5 Minute Map Quiz
Let’s start out with a map quiz
Take out a sheet of paper and number it 1-14
 Where is this?
1

2
 Where is this?

4
Where is this?

6
 Where is this?
7

8
9

10

11
Where is this?
12

13
 BONUS

14
 Answers
1 Borneo
2 Java
3 New Guinea
4 New Zealand
5 Australia
6 Madagascar
7 Russia
8 Japan
9 China
10 The Philippians
11 India
12 Brazil
13 Argentina
14 Sumatra
 What is Biogeography?
The science that attempts to understand and document
spatial patterns of biological diversity
AKA: The geography of life

How can species distribution patterns be explained?

1) Location

2) Limits

3) Shape/Fragmentation
Explanations of Distribution Patterns
 Historical: Camel Example
LUH!
Former land bridges
enabled movements to
now isolated landmasses.

Fossil Camel distribution sites

correspond with Guanaco
distribution.
 Distribution Patterns Also Limited By:
Hence camel
fossils tend to
terminate once
they reach a
certain latitude.
 EXAM QUESTION WARNING

3 Fundamental Biogeographic Processes

1. Dispersal You know its important when…

2. Extinction
3. Evolution
 Dispersal as a Historical Event
Most dispersal does not change a species distribution

It is RARE for a species to shift via a long distance

movement and therefor difficult to document

However, sometimes it does happen!

 Example: Hoary Bat Dispersed across
the Pacific to Hawaii

Not an actual
Hoary bat…don’t
get too caught up
on it!
Example 2: Coyotes dispersed across
the ice from Cape Breton to NFLD
 The OPPOSITE can also occur
Vicariance is a process by which the geographical range of a
taxon is split into discontinuous parts by the formation of a
physical barrier.
 To Expand a Range via Dispersal
One must travel to a new area and establish a new breeding population
There are different types of dispersal:
1) Jump Dispersal: Long distance across a barrier.
2) Diffusion: Gradual range expansion.
3) Secular migration: Looooooooooooong time to establish…think camels
in N. America. Ok…not THAT diffusion
 Wallace’s Line
Wallace (1876) proposed faunal regions based on mammals
Combined Wallace and Sclater (birds) systems
 Biogeographic Realms

Mammalogy Rule 1: MSW is

always right…except when it
comes to Caribou

PROPER COMMON NAME WARNING…LEARN THEM! MSW EVERYONE!!!

Biogeographic Realms

Antarctic Realm gets added in later.

EXAM QUESTION WARNING

Watch for this one .

It’s a moose but this is
what MSW calls it!

LUH! RTFQ
Pronghorn Mountain Beaver
Blind Mole Rat Eurasian Elk (AKA moose)
Guinea Pig Hoffmann's Two-toed Sloth

PROPER common name: “sloths” get you nowhere

 SOME DISTRIBUTIONAL TERMS
Douglas Adams Reference

Cosmopolitan: wide global

distribution
 SOME DISTRIBUTIONAL TERMS
Relict:
“phylogenetic/phyletic/taxonomic/distributional
/geographical”
OR

Relict: an organism that at an earlier time was

abundant in a large area but now occurs at only
one or a few small areas.
Thank-you Wikipedia
The Biology Department’s
website of choice …it must be
ok.
Biogeography Aside…

It even takes precedence over

HARVARD! 
 SOME DISTRIBUTIONAL TERMS
Disjunct: geographically split distribution
LUH!
 SOME DISTRIBUTIONAL TERMS
Provincialism: tendency for endemic taxa to be
concentrated in certain regions
 Endemism
Endemic: occurs only in one geographic place
• Why?
• Isolation in space and time
• Novel environments
• Small Founder Populations

Hmmm….this sounds like Prime Time Television…

 Endemism Novel environments
Isolation in space and time

Small Founder Populations

 Island Endemism
They landed on a big island!

Island endemism
increases with:
1) Isolationism
2) Island area

Islands also have a

lower species richness.

Not a very rich species

 Mammalogy Math…
Index “endemism richness”:
-- Compute % of species range within mapping unit
-- e.g. If entire range (i.e. 100%) is within mapping
unit, assign 1 range equivalent; if 50% of range
falls within unit, assign 0.5 range equivalents
-- Sum range equivalents for each mapping unit
Measure of each area’s contribution to global
diversity
I think this is the important part
 What is a Species?
basic unit recognized for mammals
~5,000 extant mammal species are recognized
Number of recognized mammal species has increased by >100 in recent decades

D2L WARNING: read

 New Mammal Species since 1993
It really is on D2L! We should look through the “Reference Documents “ more often!

Important Scientific
Publication

LUH!
 Concepts of Classification
Shift from looking at morphology to molecular techniques to establish
taxonomy BUT a huge verity of methods are applied before an organism’s
status is changed.

Biological Species Concept: Species are a group of actually or potentially

interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from
other such groups.

Morphological Species Concept: A species is what a good taxonomist says it

is.

Genetic Species Concept: Many cryptic species are strongly differentiated

genetically.
 So What is A Species?
Vanessa will tell you… 