Biogeography is the scientific study of the spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity, examining how and why the distributions of species, populations, communities, and ecosystems vary across geographical areas and through evolutionary time. It integrates principles from ecology, evolution, geology, and climatology to analyze processes such as dispersal, speciation, extinction, vicariance, and range shifts. Biogeography encompasses subfields including historical biogeography, which reconstructs past distributions using phylogenetic and paleontological data, and ecological biogeography, which investigates how current environmental gradients, habitat structure, and biotic interactions shape present-day distributional patterns and biodiversity gradients, such as latitudinal diversity clines and island faunas.
Every living species on Earth has a unique geographical range, with some being widespread and others being very narrow. Several factors shape a species' range size—and one of them is the evolutionary age of a species.
Evolution
Aug 27, 2025
0
22
In 1770, after Captain Cook's Endeavor struck the Great Barrier Reef and was held up for repairs, botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected hundreds of plants.
Ecology
Aug 19, 2025
0
28
Australian southern right whales visit a broader range of foraging habitats compared to the neighboring New Zealand population, according to a team of international researchers.
Ecology
Aug 19, 2025
0
17
A new study maps the planetary boundary of "functional biosphere integrity" in spatial detail and over centuries. It finds that 60% of global land areas are now already outside the locally defined safe zone, and 38% are even ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 15, 2025
0
523
The distribution of a deep-sea jellyfish species with two different traits hints at the existence of an unknown biogeographic barrier in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to new research by marine scientists at The University ...
Ecology
Jul 29, 2025
0
23
A large international team has genetically mapped glasswing butterflies found across Central and South America, rewriting the evolutionary tree and highlighting six new species.
Plants & Animals
Jul 28, 2025
0
90
A frog croaks from a walking trail. A hiker snaps a photo and uploads it to iNaturalist. That single act—one person, one amphibian and one click—feeds into a growing global dataset that scientists now use to map shifting ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 28, 2025
0
34
Using more than 2.8 billion fungal sequences sampled from 130 countries, scientists map the biodiversity of Earth's underground mycorrhizal fungal communities.
Plants & Animals
Jul 23, 2025
0
299
Amphidromous fish—which migrate between freshwater streams and the sea—can move between habitats thanks to ocean currents. Since island streams are generally small and vulnerable to human impact, understanding how exactly ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 16, 2025
0
24
The Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans) is a nocturnal and arboreal rodent that inhabits the boreal taiga forests from eastern Russia to Finland and Estonia. Despite its wide distribution, little was previously known ...
Plants & Animals
Jul 8, 2025
0
27
