Biogeography Essay

Biogeography is the study of the geographical distribution of flora and fauna across the earth’s landscapes. Biogeography is actually a subset of biology, however physical geographers have made many contributions to the discipline making it a part of Geography as well. The study of biogeography divides the earth’s surface into regions called biomes based on the composition of flora and fauna as a result of current and historical causes. These causes are brought about through evolutionary processes that gave birth to different species and genus, past and current climates and geographic characteristics that would have impacted the movement of flora and fauna (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2016). These factors generated distinct differences

Evidence of early biogeography can be found in written records from Aristotle (384-322 BC) with his question of “How are organisms distributed around the world?” (Welcome to Biogeography. (n.d.). While many were unknowingly using or thinking about biogeography, world exploration didn’t begin until the 1700s, starting with Carl Linnaeus, James Cook, Comte de Buffon, and Johann R. Forester with the collection of specimens that were cataloged and later compared to each other. James Cook led three of these world explorations during the years 1768-1771, 1772-1775, 1776-1779. Unfortunately, Cook did not make it back from his last voyage exploring a possible north channel to go around North America for he was killed on the Hawaiian Islands. Cook’s excellent mapping skills would enable more explorations of the world for years to come (MEDIA FACTORY Czech Republic, a. s.

Sclater created one of the very first publications of biogeographic regions in 1858 based on the distribution of bird species. In the 1870s, Adolf Engler created a schema based on plant species while Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker’s collection of plant species and Alfred Russel Wallace’s zoogeographic work influenced Charles Darwin and led to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution (Groves, 2017). From the 1850s to 1900, the exploration of Natural Selection was of major interests, with the 1900s to 1950’s uncovering evolution and continental drift followed by ecological classifications and centers of origin being created. (Historical Development of Biogeography. (n.d.). Recently, works focusing on classifying biomes and analyzing changing migration patterns and species distributions of certain animals have been of major interests. These topics are most likely of major interest today due to changing climates and weather patterns that are influencing many of the factors that biogeography is focused