Böcker av Michael Heads

Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. It is an integrative field of inquiry that unites concepts and information from ecology, evolutionary biology, and other biological sciences as well as geography and geology. This book provides the first in-depth treatment of

Biogeography and Evolution in New Zealand provides the first in-depth treatment of the biogeography of New Zealand, a region that has been a place of long-enduring interest to ecologists, evolutionary scientists, geographers, geologists, and scientists in related disciplines. It serves as a key addition to the contemporary discussion on regionalizationΓÇöhow is New Zealand different from the rest of the world? With what other areas does it share its geology, history, and biota? Do new molecular phylogenies show that New Zealand may be seen as a biological ΓÇÿparallel universeΓÇÖ within global evolution?

Molecular studies reveal highly ordered geographic patterns in plant and animal distributions. The tropics illustrate these patterns of community immobilism leading to allopatric differentiation, as well as other patterns of mobilism, range expansion, and overlap of taxa. Integrating Earth history and biogeography, Molecular Panbiogeography of the Tropics is an alternative view of distributional history in which groups are older than suggested by fossils and fossil-calibrated molecular clocks. The author discusses possible causes for the endemism of high-level taxa in tropical America and Madagascar, and overlapping clades in South America, Africa, and Asia. The book concludes with a critique of adaptation by selection, founded on biogeography and recent work in genetics.