Croizat’s dangerous ideas: practices, prejudices, and politics in contemporary biogeography

Abstract

The biogeographic contributions of Léon Croizat (1894Croizat ( -1982 and the conflictive relationships with his intellectual descendants and critics are analysed. Croizat's panbiogeography assumed that vicariance is the most important biogeographic process and that dispersal does not contribute to biogeographic patterns. Dispersalist biogeographers criticized or avoided mentioning panbiogeography, especially in the context of the "hardening" of the Modern Synthesis. Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History associated panbiogeography with Hennig's phylogenetic systematics, creating cladistic biogeography. On the other hand, a group of New Zealand biologists formalized Croizat's original concepts and soon began arguing with cladistic biogeographers over the relative merits of their approaches. In Latin America, panbiogeography and cladistic biogeography were incorporated as parts of an integrative approach. A recent development, molecular panbiogeography, is based on the use of molecular phylogenetic data. The current practice shows that some authors insist on considering panbiogeography as the only appropriate approach and vicariance as the only relevant process, whereas others accept Croizat's dictum "Earth and life evolve together" as a useful guide to understanding broad, general patterns, but recognize that dispersal also contributes substantially to biotic assembly. The framework of integrative pluralism allows to explain the complexities of the biogeographic processes involved in biotic assembly without the need of unification on a large scale. This historical analysis intersects with the existing historiography of the Modern Synthesis and may provide some insights on the dynamics of integrative pluralism, which may be especially relevant in the current development of the Extended Synthesis.

When phylogenetics met biogeography: Willi Hennig, Lars Brundin and the roots of phylogenetic and cladistic biogeography

“…Gareth Nelson, one of the authors who in the 1970s formalized cladistic biogeography (Morrone, 2021), discussed Brundin's (1966) and Hennig's (1966b) approach to biogeography (Nelson, 1969). He provided some examples where phylogenetic trees were used to hypothesize on the geographical distribution of the ancestral species based on the distribution of Recent species, and dispersal was inferred after optimizing the areas in the tree.…”

“…At the American Museum of Natural History, New York, Gareth Nelson, Don E. Rosen and Norman Platnick associated Croizat's panbiogeography with Hennig's phylogenetic systematics, creating cladistic or vicariance biogeography (Nelson, 1973, 1974; Nelson and Platnick, 1980, 1981; Platnick and Nelson, 1978; Rosen, 1976, 1978). This approach assumes a correspondence between phylogenetic relationships and relationships between areas (Morrone, 2009, 2020, 2021). Parenti and Ebach's (2009) “comparative biogeography”, which “uses the naturally hierarchical phylogenetic relationships of clades to discover the biotic area relationships among local and global biogeographic regions” (Parenti and Ebach, 2009, p. 9) is equivalent to cladistic biogeography.…”

“…Gareth Nelson, one of the authors who in the 1970s formalized cladistic biogeography (Morrone, 2021), discussed Brundin's (1966) and Hennig's (1966b) approach to biogeography (Nelson, 1969). He provided some examples where phylogenetic trees were Fig.…”

“…Cladistic or vicariance biogeography (Nelson, 1974;Nelson and Platnick, 1981;Rosen, 1976Rosen, , 1978 is usually assumed to represent a different approach, derived from the combination of Croizat's panbiogeography with Hennig's phylogenetic systematics (e.g. Humphries and Parenti, 1999;Morrone, 2009Morrone, , 2021Morrone and Crisci, 1995;Posadas et al, 2006). In recent decades, a few authors have used the term "phylogenetic biogeography" to refer to some methods implementing cladistic biogeography (e.g.…”

Mitos, descobertas geocientíficas e os primórdios da história da Biogeografia

“…teve como -pano de fundo‖ a metáfora -earth and life evolved together‖ (CROIZAT 1964). O confronto entre ideias aparentemente inconciliáveis se deu e, como resultado, a biogeografia se libertou dos conceitos de espaço absoluto, centro de origem e dispersão saltatória 4 (CROIZAT 1958(CROIZAT , 1964(CROIZAT , 1976CROIZAT et al, 1974;NELSON & PLATNICK 1980;CRAW et al 1999;MORRONE 2021) LOMOLINO et al 2004;WILLIAMS & EBACH 2008;PAPAVERO et al, 2013). No entanto, preciosos resgates de fatos históricos (e.g., ROMM 1994) e novos enfoques (e.g., AVISE 2000;…”