Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
species of that group in that country, but may be enormously mod-
ified by the presence of barriers such as seas, rivers, mountains,
changes of climate from one region to the next, or other ecological
boundaries, and the like, also by the action of man, and by other
causes. (Willis 1922:63)
Figure 3.1
Geographic distribution of very rare (VR), rare (R), and rather rare (RR)
species from Sri Lanka (modified from Willis 1922:56).
Croizat (1958a) commented on Willis's ideas, which he considered to
represent another challenge to dispersalism. However, he criticized the idea
that the widest-ranged plants are the oldest and the smallest-ranged the
youngest. Despite this dismissal, Croizat considered that if his own work
were “to be 'placed' somewhere in the stream of our times any how, it surely
would not fall with Darwinism in the least (and even less with Matthewism,
Mayrism, Simpsonism, Darlingtonism, Goodism, etc.) but find more or less
distal place in the sphere of Willisism” (Croizat 1958a:116). Nelson (1994)
considered Willis's curves to be artifacts derived from paraphyly and ancest-
or-descendant relationships.
French entomologist René Jeannel (1879-1965), a specialist in beetles
(Coleoptera) and earlier supporter of Wegener's continental drift, published
severalmonographsinwhichhediscussedbiogeographicdistributionbased
on phylogenetic bases (Roig-Juñent 2005). In one of his most important
works,
Les Migadopides (Coleoptera, Adephaga), une Lignée Subantarc-
tique
(Jeannel 1938), he analyzed a tribe of the family Carabidae. He char-
