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.
The mountains of Mexico and Central America harbor some of the greatest biodiversity of oak trees worldwide, and a landmark study conducted by The Morton Arboretum with U.S. and Mexican collaborators provides the most definitive ...
Evolution
May 5, 2026
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293
Climate change is likely to drive rodent-borne arenaviruses into parts of South America that have never faced these diseases, putting new communities of people at risk, finds a study from the University of California, Davis. ...
Ecology
May 4, 2026
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A new study by scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has revealed significant cryptic diversity within two-toed sloths (Choloepus) in Amazonia, challenging the long-established ...
Ecology
Apr 27, 2026
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9
Vast online archives of photos, videos and sound recordings collected by the public are reshaping how scientists study the natural world, allowing researchers to answer questions that were once out of reach. A new study led ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 23, 2026
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9
Increasing evidence suggests that our species emerged through interactions between populations living in different parts of Africa, rather than from a single birthplace. Until now, however, most explanations for how those ...
Evolution
Apr 22, 2026
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In the largest genomic mapping of Africa's elephants to date, an international team of researchers shows that elephant history is defined by the ability to move across large distances and exchange genes throughout the African ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 16, 2026
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94
It often starts with something small, such as a new bird in a branch, a vibrant butterfly in a yard, a colorful plant growing through a crack in the sidewalk, or as part of a lawn. Suddenly, you are engaged and can't help ...
Environment
Apr 13, 2026
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95
Why are frogs diverse in some parts of Africa's rainforests and less so in others? The patterns of cooling and glaciation during the last ice age would probably not have been your first answer or even your last-ditch guess, ...
Evolution
Apr 7, 2026
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80
Accents are usually thought of as a human trait, indicating where a person has grown up or the communities they belong—and new research shows the same dialects can also occur in Australia's largest carnivorous bat.
Plants & Animals
Apr 1, 2026
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12
Identifying weeds, checking out the pollen map, or discovering new plant life-forms are among the promising wealth of data available to users of PlantNet—a "Shazam!" for plants. Pierre Bonnet and computer scientist Alexis ...
Biotechnology
Mar 31, 2026
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