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Biogeography Quotes

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Biogeography Quotes

“One final note on the biogeographic divisions of the world. The very feature that stunned Buffon and his contemporaries, and eventually led to the revolutionary insights that would define the field of biogeography—the evolutionary distinctiveness of different regions—is now waning in the face of the geographic and ecological advance of one species: our own. Few taxa and regions across the globe have escaped the biotic homogenization caused by humanity. Regional biotas are becoming increasingly similar as a result of two pervasive, anthropogenic activities—extinctions of endemic species and species introductions. In fact, these two homogenizing effects of humanity are interrelated, with species introductions being one of the major causes of extinctions of endemic species. Recall Gertrude Stein’s lament over the loss in distinctiveness of place—that “there is no there, there.” Tragically, this is becoming the sobering reality for the increasingly homogenized biosphere. While we may not be suffering from the muted, “ Silent Spring ” that Rachel Carson warned us about in 1962, the monotonous cacophony of coquís (frogs native to Puerto Rico) and cicada in exotic lands as isolated as Hawaii now drown out the euphonious, more subtle calls of honeycreepers and other birds native to the islands.”

ExtinctionRachel CarsonInvasive SpeciesGertrude SteinBiogeography
Book:Biogeography: A Very Short Introduction
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“There’s a voice that says: "So what?" It’s not my voice, it’s probably not yours, but it makes itself heard in the arenas of public opinion, querulous and smug and fortified by just a little knowledge, which as always is a dangerous thing. "So what if a bunch of species go extinct?" It says. "Extinction is a natural process. Darwin himself said so, didn’t he? Extinction is the complement of evolution, making room for new species to evolve. There have always been extinctions. So why worry about these extinctions currently being caused by humanity?" And there has always been a pilot light burning in your furnace. So why worry when your house is on fire?”

FutureDarwinSo WhatExtinctionsBiogeography
Book:The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction
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“The more recent, historic waves of extinctions of megafauna and other ecologically naive wildlife on oceanic islands followed the tract of colonizations by Pacific Islanders—ultimately exterminating at least seventeen of Madagascar’s largest lemurs and all of the ten or so species of New Zealand’s giant flightless birds—the moas. The saga of anthropogenic extinctions was repeated countless times across the marine realm as hundreds, and possibly thousands of species of flightless birds and other insular endemics suffered extinctions at the hands, teeth, and claws of our colonizing populations and the legion of rats, mice, cats, weasels, goats, and other species we introduced to even the most remote islands. Not only did we severely reduce the distinctiveness of oceanic islands by driving thousands of endemic species to extinction, but we compounded this by introducing a redundant suite of commensal species to these islands. The result was a global-scale homogenization of nature; a dissolution of biogeography’s most fundamental pattern, Buffon’s Law—the biological distinctiveness of place.”

ExtinctionBiogeographyBuffon S Law
Book:Biogeography: A Very Short Introduction
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