This detailed exposition gives background and context to how modern biogeography has got to where it is now. For biogeographers and other researchers interested in biodiversity and the evolution of life on islands, Biogeology: Evolution in a Changing Landscape provides an overview of a large swathe of the globe encompassing Wallacea and the western Pacific. The book contains the full text of the original article explored in each chapter, presented as it appeared on publication.
- Holistic treatment, collecting together a series of important biogeographical papers into a single volume
- Authored by an expert who has spent nearly three decades actively involved in biogeography
- Describes and interprets a region of exceptional biodiversity and extreme endemism
- The only book to provide an integrated treatment of Wallacea, Melanesia, New Zealand, the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands and Antarctica
- Offers a critique of fashionable neo-dispersalist arguments, showing how these still suffer from the same weaknesses of the original Darwinian formulation.
The chapters also include analysis of many major theoretical and philosophical issues of modern biogeographic theory, so that those interested in a more philosophical approach will find Biogeology stimulating and thought-provoking.
Chapter 1: Setting the scene
Chapter 2: Flesh and rocks evolve together
Chapter 3: Cleopatra’s nose
Chapter 4: New Guinea revisited
Chapter 5: The Malay Archipelago
Chapter 6: The furious fifties
Chapter 7: The Great South Land
Chapter 8: Natural areas
Chapter 9: The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle
Chapter 10: Synthesis
Bernard Michaux, born in the UK and now living in New Zealand, is a school teacher and has published extensively on biogeography and evolution.