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.
In the realm of marine biogeography, there is a widely held scientific principle: the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans are worlds apart. If you dive in Brazil and then in Okinawa, you expect to see entirely different groups ...
Evolution
Jan 30, 2026
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A QUT-led study has found how increasing aridity and habitat variation and the subsequent emergence of grasslands shaped the evolution of modern kangaroos and wallabies. The study, published in Molecular Phylogenetics and ...
Evolution
Jan 29, 2026
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Lipstick vines get their name from their bright red, tube-shaped flowers. But one member of this group of plants has lost its lipstick-like appearance—its flowers are shorter, wider, and yellowish green in color. It also ...
Evolution
Jan 27, 2026
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New research published in Nature Ecology and Evolution reveals significant recent shifts in tree diversity among the tropical forests of the Andes and Amazon, driven by global change.
Plants & Animals
Jan 23, 2026
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89
A new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford has shown that the shape and orientation of coastlines significantly influenced extinction patterns for animals living in the shallow oceans during the last 540 million ...
Ecology
Jan 15, 2026
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A new study, published in the journal Science, reveals how millennia of human migration across Pacific islands led to the introduction of invasive pig species all over the Asia-Pacific region.
Ecology
Jan 1, 2026
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What you don't see is as important as what you do, when it comes to mapping Antarctic seabird breeding sites.
Plants & Animals
Dec 15, 2025
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67
A new study from UNC-Chapel Hill researchers shows that advanced artificial intelligence tools, specifically large language models (LLMs), can accurately determine the locations where plant specimens were originally collected, ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 5, 2025
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51
An international research team led by Aalborg University with contributions from the University of Vienna has systematically mapped the microbiome of an entire country for the first time. In the study "Microflora Danica," ...
Ecology
Dec 4, 2025
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188
A research team led by the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with multiple domestic and international research institutions, has made progress in investigating forest diversity ...
Ecology
Dec 2, 2025
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