BIOGEOGRAPHY: HISTORY, WHAT IT STUDIES AND RESEARCH EXAMPLES - GEOGRAPHY - 2025

The biogeography or biological geography is a major subdiscipline of geography that seeks to understand the distribution of living beings on the surface of the Earth, along with the study of communities that form the geographical environment. The remaining branches are physical geography and human geography.

Biological geography is divided into two main disciplines: phytogeography and zoogeography, which are responsible for studying the distribution of plants and animals, respectively. Other authors prefer to divide it into historical biogeography and ecological biogeography.

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Biogeography studies organisms at different taxonomic levels and also focuses its study on the different habitats and ecosystems in which organisms are found.

It is a science that is directly related to biological evolution, since the dispersal and distribution of organisms is the result of past events led by evolutionary forces. It is also supported by other branches of biology, such as ecology, botany, and zoology, among others.

History

Biogeography was understood in a totally different way before evolutionary ideas were established. Species were thought to have had a unique center of divine creation, and from there they progressively dispersed.

The origin of biogeography as we know it today dates back to the 19th century, together with the research of Alfred Russel Wallace. This remarkable naturalist proposes vicariance - in addition to describing, in parallel with Charles Darwin, the theory of natural selection.

The advent of evolutionary theories conclusively changed biogeographical ideas, as it did in the other branches of biology. Later we will discuss the history of each branch of this discipline.

What does biogeography study?

The distribution of organic beings is a subject that has fascinated the most notable naturalists for centuries. Answering questions such as: why are most marsupials confined to the limits of Australia ?, or why do polar bears (Ursus maritimus) inhabit the Arctic ?, are some of the objectives of this science.

The term biogeography is formed by the Greek roots "bio" which means life, "geo" which means earth and "spelling" which means engraving or tracing. Understanding it like this, biography means the science that studies where living beings live.

Study the distribution of organic beings, not only spatially but also temporally. In addition to seeking to understand the forces and processes that led to such distribution.

Subdisciplines of biogeography

Zoogeography and Phytogeography

There are different ways of classifying the sub-disciplines of biological geography. Some authors separate them based on the realm in which the study is focused. That is, if they study animals it is called zoogeography, while the study of plants is called phytogeography.

Thanks to the lack of movement of the plants, they are organisms of easy study. While the various modes of movement of animals complicate a little understanding of their dispersal.

That is why most scientists who conduct research in the field of biogeography prefer to use different plant lineages as study objectives.

Historical biogeography and ecological biogeography

Another way to classify this discipline is in the branches of historical biogeography and ecological biogeography. The first branch uses three methodologies to explain the distribution of organisms: dispersal, panbiogeography and cladistics.

Dispersalism is an old idea that is based on the ideas of Victorian naturalists, such as those of the famous British naturalist Charles Darwin and his colleague Alfred Wallace. The goal is to study organisms as individual taxa.

Panbiogeography was proposed with Croizat in the 20th century, arguing that the study of taxa should be carried out as a set (and not at the individual level, as proposed by dispersalism).

In the 60s, a new discipline emerged, formed by the union of panbiography and the school of taxonomic classification proposed by the German entomologist Willi Hennig called cladism. From this combination arises cladist biogeography.

On the other hand, ecological biogeography seeks to understand how the different ecological factors affect the distribution of species.

Why do biogeographic patterns exist?

The biogeographic patterns that we find are mainly based on dispersal limitations. That is, there are different processes that prevent some organisms from expanding their range of movement to a new place, or their ability to establish themselves in a new location.

If there were no limits to dispersion, we would find all potentially living things in all regions of the planet and the spatial patterns (if observed) would be completely random.

In order to delve into this aspect, we must talk about the niche of the species. This ecological concept seeks to encompass the biotic and abiotic factors of the places where a species is able to persist. In this way, the niche marks the ranges in which a species can disperse, since they cannot “leave” their ecological niche.

There is no doubt that human action has modified the distribution of the rest of the organisms, so the presence of this species is a fundamental issue within biogeography.

Relevance in evolutionary biology

The distribution of organic beings is used as proof of their evolution. Darwin, during his journey on the Beagle, noticed how the distribution of the animals followed very peculiar patterns.

For example, he realized how the distribution in the animals of the Galapagos Islands was related to that of the South American continent, but both differed in key aspects, finding some endemic species.

When a species colonizes an uninhabited area (in this case the archipelago), it finds a series of unoccupied ecological niches and predators are generally scarce. In this way, the species can radiate in multiple species, which is called adaptive radiation.

In addition, Darwin emphasizes the distribution pattern of animals, which would not make any sense if we do not apply evolutionary principles. All these concepts were key to the development of his theory.

Research example

Biogeography and Human Infectious Diseases

In 2015, Murray and colleagues published an article in the journal entitled “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” that sought to understand the distribution of infectious diseases. These are considered a problem of global interest by medical entities and the subject was very little studied.

This study succeeded in showing that human infectious diseases cluster in well-defined patterns - on a global scale. The authors analyzed more than 187 infectious diseases in 225 countries, finding that there are spatial groups where the diseases are located.

The result was shocking for the researchers, since humans currently experience relevant events that have led to globalization. Despite the phenomenon of globalization, infectious diseases seem to be mainly restricted by ecological barriers.

References

1. Huggett, RJ (2004). Fundamentals of biogeography. Routledge.
2. Jenkins, DG, & Ricklefs, RE (2011). Biogeography and Ecology: two views of one world. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 366 (1576), 2331–2335.
3. Llorente-Bousquets, J., & Morrone, JJ (Eds.). (2001). Introduction to biogeography in Latin America: theories, concepts, methods and applications. UNAM.
4. Lomolino, MV, Riddle, BR, & Whittaker, RJ (2017). Biogeography.
5. Murray, KA, Preston, N., Allen, T., Zambrana-Torrelio, C., Hosseini, PR, & Daszak, P. (2015). Global biogeography of human infectious diseases. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112 (41), 12746–12751.
6. Rodríguez, AA (2004). General geography. Pearson Education.
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8. Whitfield, J. (2005). Is everything everywhere ?. Science, 310 (5750), 960-961.
9. Wiens JJ (2011). The niche, biogeography and species interactions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 366 (1576), 2336–2350.