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THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENTGeography 101 |
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ToCLIFEAnimalsBiomesTropicsTemperateColdHawai'i
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Animals
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of living things. Biogeographers map the distributions of species, groups of species, and whole ecosystems, and then try to explain how and why that distribution developed. Within biogeography are two branches, the study of the distribution of vegetation and the study of the distribution of animals, also called zoogeography. We begin with broadly recognized Zoogeographic Realms. Because animals are mobile, there are many thousands of species common to two or more Realms. Nonetheless, each of the Realms shown on the map has a core of quickly recognizable species that distinguish it. If I asked you which Realm contained giraffes and zebras, you would immediately think of sub-Saharan Africa, the Ethiopian Realm. How about kangaroos? The Australian Realm. Grizzly bears and pronghorn antelope? Nearctic. Giant sloths and llamas? Neotropical.
Having a placenta turned out be a big evolutionary advantage and wherever the two groups lived together marsupials died out, with a few exceptions like the opossums of North and South America. Australia, however, became detached from the other continents and drifted in isolation across the Southern Ocean; placental mammals did not have the opportunity to colonize it. Thus, a unique and ancient collection of marsupial mammals survived as a kind of living museum for tens of million of years.
Interestingly, marsupials developed similar body shapes to placentals
to fill similar niches in their environments. The most obvious example
is the Tasmanian wolf, the last of which died in a cage in 1936. It
looks identical to placental canine carnivores, but is, in fact, a marsupial
mammal complete with nursing pouch. Of course today, Australia is overrun with placental mammals and the splendid isolation and preservation of the marsupials and monotremes is over. The continent teems with horses, cows, rabbits, cats, dogs, sheep, rats, pigs, deer, goats, ferrets, camels, and, of course, humans. Indeed, one half of the native marsupials of Australia have become extinct in the past 200 years.
The Palearctic and Nearctic Realms also contain similar fauna, as animals have been able to migrate between the two Realms on land bridges formed when sea levels were lower than today. Harsh climate characterizes these areas where only hardy animals survive, such as bison, mountain goat, bear, and the horse. |
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