The Relevance of Hierarchy Theory to Biogeography and Paleobiogeography

Abstract

One of the strengths of paleobiogeography as a discipline is that it sits at the nexus or intersection of biological and geological research. Major conceptual advances in both of these subjects critically impact research in paleobiogeography. It is the association of the changing and coevolving spiral between life and geology, mediated by geography, that makes biogeography a very broad field (Brown and Lomolino, 1998). In this way it is similar to evolutionary biology, and Simpson’s (1944) statement about that field also applies to biogeography: “the basic problems of evolution are so broad that they cannot hopefully be attacked from the point of view of a single scientific discipline” (Simpson, 1944, p. XV). I first want to demonstrate why this statement is true of evolutionary biology, and then I will go on to show why it is also true of biogeography.