Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
stated that “an adequate concept of space, that is, spatial differentiation in
its temporal context, has been the most elusive factor in the history of sys-
tematics, one rivaling if not exceeding Darwin's 'mystery of mysteries'—the
origin of species” (Nelson 1977:450). In particular, we lack a relativistic spa-
tiotemporal perspective that might represent a break with the traditional or-
ganism-environment dichotomy (Craw and Page 1988). This new perspect-
ive might allow reintroduction of biogeography into evolutionary biology.
Biogeography is a peculiar discipline because, despite the existence of
books, journals, symposia, and courses on the subject, few people are em-
ployed primarily as biogeographers (Nelson 1978a, 1985). This may be be-
cause biogeography occupies an intermediate area between geography,
geology, and biology, being practiced by systematists, ecologists, paleon-
tologists, anthropologists, naturalists, and geographers, among others. We
may consider biogeography a synthetic discipline (Brown and Lomolino
heterogeneous in its principles and methods, lacking the conceptual unity of
other sciences (Morrone 2004a).
In the past two decades biogeography has undergone an extraordinary
theoretical and methodological renovation. Morrone and Crisci (1995) held
that biogeography is passing through a revolution concerning its found-
ations, basic concepts, methods, and relationships with other disciplines.
Andersson (1996) detected a problem with the ontology of biogeography
because there is no consensus about which phenomena should be con-
sidered biogeographic. Crisci (2001) referred to external and internal forces
that characterize this revolution; the former include the paradigm of plate
tectonics in Earth sciences, cladistics as the basic language of biology,
and biologists' perceptions of biogeography, whereas the latter include the
proliferation of methods and a seemingly endless philosophical debate. I
think that other important developments in molecular biology, informatics,
geographic information systems, ecology, and geology should be added.
Humphries (2004) sadly noted that rather than creating an arena for dis-
cussion, biogeographers are becoming politically balkanized, even misrep-
resenting the ideas of others. Until quite recently, there has been little com-
municationbetweenbiogeographerspracticingdifferentapproachesandtoo
little integration of their findings, even though the need for integration has
been recognized for some time (Lomolino et al. 2006). Despite this com-
plex and confusing situation, interest in biogeography is growing. A quant-
itative measure of this interest can be easily seen by searching the sub-
