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.
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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A 30-year "snapshot study" of birds in the Pacific Northwest is showing their surprising resilience in the face of climate change. The project started when School of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Benjamin Freeman ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 17, 2025
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Scientists at the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) and University of Florida have solved a botanical mystery: Hawaii's wild blueberries originally came from temperate East Asia, not North America as expected.
Plants & Animals
Nov 10, 2025
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54
University of Queensland researchers have completed the first comprehensive studies of recent fire history and koala populations across Australia's 9,300 islands.
Ecology
Nov 5, 2025
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13
Scientists have taken an unprecedented look at marine fish species living in the world's oceans by studying traces of genetic material in seawater. One of the most surprising results was discovering species in places where ...
When the volcanic island of Surtsey rose from the North Atlantic Ocean in 1963, it offered scientists a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe how life takes hold on brand-new and barren land. For decades, ecologists believed ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 17, 2025
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Hippos, today restricted to sub-Saharan Africa, survived in central Europe far longer than previously assumed. Analyses of bone finds demonstrate that hippos inhabited the Upper Rhine Graben sometime between approximately ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 10, 2025
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56
Researchers at University of Tsukuba have investigated the genetic diversity and future distribution of Shorea macrophylla (Dipterocarpaceae), an important tree species endemic to Borneo. They found that populations in northeastern ...
Ecology
Oct 9, 2025
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21
Scientists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, as part of an international research team, have studied the land snail and slug fauna in northern Vietnam's Cuc Phuong National Park. The now-published findings document an ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 30, 2025
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30
Snailfish living in deep-sea trenches in the Pacific and Indian oceans may have wider geographic distributions than previously thought, according to a researcher at The University of Western Australia.
Plants & Animals
Sep 30, 2025
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