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Biogeography Ch. 2
Terms and definitions from "Biogeography" by Lomolino et al. (ed. 5)
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Age of Exploration | period from the 15th through the 18th centuries during which ships from European nations traveled the globe and, although primarily motivated by economic and political gain, enabled the first global-scale views of the natural world. |
| Buffon's Law | named in honor of the 18th century biogeographer Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788) who observed that different regions, even those with similar environmental characteristics, are inhabited by different assemblages of species. |
| cosmopolitan | occurring essentially worldwide, as on all habitable landmasses or in all major oceanic regions. Contrasts with endemic. |
| floristic belt | a series of plant communities that are characterized by different growth forms or physiognomies that occur in predictable series (e.g., deserts, savanna, dry woodlands, coniferous forests and tundra) along elevational and latitudinal gradients. |
| disjunction | a discontinuous range of a monophyletic taxon in which at least two closely related populations are separated by a wide geographic distance. |
| vicariance biogeography | an approach in historical biogeography that attempts to reconstruct the historical events that led to observed distributional patterns based largely on the assumption that these patterns resulted from the splitting areas and not long-distance dispersal. |
| Bergmann's rule | the tendency for the average body mass of geographic populations of an animal species to increase with latitude. |
| Allen's rule | among homeotherms, the ecogeographic (morphogeographic) trend for limbs and extremities to become shorter and more compact in colder climates than in warmer ones. |
| Jordan's law of vertebrae | the tendency for the number of vertebrae in marine fish to increase along a gradient from the warm waters of the tropics to cooler waters of the high latitudes. |
| orthogenesis | the supposed intrinsic tendency of organisms to evolve steadily in a particular direction, e.g., to become larger or smaller. |
| life zones | the characteristic changes in vegetation composition and form that occur along an elevational or latitudinal gradient. |
| areography | the study of the structure and dynamics of geographic ranges, including variation in their sizes, shapes, and overlap. |
| macroecology | a multi-scale or broad-scale approach to investigating the assembly and structure of biotas. |
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