An Okinawan thrush and the principles of zoogeography

by Greg Mayer My Okinawan correspondent sends the following photograph of an apparently window-killed bird. I thought immediately, “a thrush”, noting the similarity in bill, body and leg shape to that of the familiar North American Robin (Turdus migratorius). I was also immediately reminded of the justly famous opening passage in Alfred Russel Wallace’s Island […]

Australian placental cats

by Greg Mayer Australia is a zoogeographer’s dream world—it’s the most spectacularly distinctive place on Earth, and we know why. Around 250 million years ago, most of the world’s continental plates amalgamated into a single super-continent—Pangaea. During the Mesozoic (the “Age of Reptiles”), Pangaea began breaking up, with many of today’s southern continents (South America, Africa, […]

More on swimming tortoises

by Greg Mayer Dennis Hansen, our Aldabra correspondent, sent Jerry a very nice video of a swimming Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea). This immediately brought to mind what is, in my view, one of the most important recent papers in biogeography, “The first substantiated case of trans-oceanic tortoise dispersal” by Justin Gerlach, Catharine Muir, and […]

Spot the wood frog

by Greg Mayer Well, it’s not that hard to spot, but you can see how the wood frog (Rana sylvatica) is aptly named. My Minnesota correspondent found this fellow along Caribou Trail (a road) and Jonvick Creek near Lutsen, Cook County, Minnesota, about a half mile from the north shore of Lake Superior, on 10 […]

Island faunas and the Falkland Islands fox

by Greg Mayer The evidence from biogeography is arguably the most important evidence for evolution. P.J. Darlington, perhaps the greatest zoogeographer of the 20th century, said that zoogeography showed Darwin evolution. And Jerry has long insisted that biogeography is at least among, if not the, most persuasive evidence for evolution. It was thus with great […]

Solenodons on the BBC

by Greg Mayer BBC reporter Rebecca Morelle has been hot on the trail of the nearly extinct Hispaniolan solenodon in the mountains of the Dominican Republic. (There is another living species of solenodon in Cuba.) Here’s what they look like. The BBC pursued them along with Dominican and British scientists, breathlessly recording their hopes of […]

The Geography of Tapirs

by Greg Mayer Although far from the longest chapter in WEIT, I find the chapter on biogeography the single most persuasive one for showing why evolution is true.  I think Jerry finds it compelling as well. This might seem surprising since he’s a geneticist: one might think he would find some of the genetic evidence […]