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.
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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68
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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189
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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17
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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28
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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614
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
