Reinvention of Australasian Biogeography - Malte Ebach

Reinvention of Australasian Biogeography

Reform, Revolt and Rebellion

(Autor)

Buch | Softcover
192 Seiten
2017
CSIRO Publishing (Verlag)
978-1-4863-0483-7 (ISBN)
69,95 inkl. MwSt
The story of the evolution of biogeographical practice in Australasia.
Biogeography, the study of the distribution of life on Earth, has undergone more conceptual changes, revolutions and turf wars than any other scientific fields. Australasian biogeographers are responsible for several of these great upheavals, including debates on cladistics, panbiogeography and the drowning of New Zealand, some of which have significantly shaped present-day studies.

Australasian biogeography has been caught in a cycle of reinvention that has lasted for over 150 years. The biogeographic research making headlines today is merely a shadow of past practices, having barely advanced scientifically. Fundamental biogeographic questions raised by naturalists a century ago remain unanswered yet are as relevent today as they were then. Scientists still do not know whether Australia and New Zealand are natural biotic areas or if they are in fact artifical amalgamations of areas. The same question goes for all biotic areas in Australasia: are they real?

Reinvention of Australasian Biogeography tells the story of the history of Australasian biogeography, enabling understanding of the cycle of reinvention and the means by which to break it, and paves the way for future biogeographical research.

Features



Presents the theory and foundations of biogeography, a contentious scientific field
Explores the science of biogeography and the important role that it plays in the history and future of Australasia
Examines the story of biogeography; the divisions, conflicts, disputes and what the future may hold

.

Malte C. Ebach is a Senior Lecturer in Biogeography at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He has published extensively on the history, theory and methodology of biological systematics, taxonomy and biogeography. He is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Biography, Australian Systematic Botany, Editor of Zootaxa and Phytotaxa, and Editor-in-Chief of the CRC Biogeography Book Series. In 2010, Malte and his co-author Lynne R. Parenti were recipients of the Smithsonian's Secretary Prize for the textbook Comparative Biogeography: Discovering and Classifying Biogeographical Patterns of a Dynamic Earth.

Foreword

Prologue

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Studying the distribution of life on Earth

The search for natural biotic areas

Cladistics: the search for natural taxa and their relationships

Cladistic biogeography: the search for natural areas and
their relationships

What is an area? Establishing the cladistic biogeographic method

How to do cladistic biogeography (or how to start reforming)

Reform and the three phases of biogeography

Chapter 2: Biogeography comes to Australasia

Biological classification and biogeography: a condensed history

The two area classifications: the triumph of Humboldt's plant
geography

Australian biogeography: flora, fauna, elements and biomes

The need for testable hypotheses

Chapter 3: Carving up Australasia: the quest for natural biogeographic regions

Is New Zealand a zoological region?

Are Australia’s regions artificial?

Reinvention thesis and bioregionalisation

Chapter 4: The spectre of cladism: cladistics in the Land of Oz

The cladistics war

Early Australasian practitioners and critics of numerical cladistics

Transformed cladistics in the Land of Oz

Cladistics in Australian palaeontology

Chapter 5: A new biogeography: the panbiogeography revolt in New Zealand

Panbiogeography: Earth and life evolving together

The development of panbiogeography in New Zealand (1978–1989)

Panbiogeography and its reformation

Chapter 6: Goodbye Gondwana: the drowning of Zealandia and the
rise of neodispersalism

New Zealand: archipelago, island continent or oceanic island?

The New Zealand drowning hypothesis: towards an integrative
biogeography

Integrative biogeography: an undisciplined discipline?

Chapter 7: All possible futures

Entering the analytical phase: testing the link between evidence and
hypothesis

Extending Ball's criteria: invasions, drowning and neodispersalism

Towards the analytical phase and biogeographic discovery

A future of Australasian biogeography ending the cycle of reinvention

Framing biogeographic problems using the taxonomy analogy

Glossary

Endnotes

References

Index

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo Illustrations, unspecified
Verlagsort Melbourne
Sprache englisch
Maße 170 x 245 mm
Gewicht 493 g
Themenwelt Naturwissenschaften Biologie Botanik
Naturwissenschaften Biologie Ökologie / Naturschutz
Naturwissenschaften Biologie Zoologie
ISBN-10 1-4863-0483-4 / 1486304834
ISBN-13 978-1-4863-0483-7 / 9781486304837
Zustand Neuware
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