70. Biogeography

This lecture introduces biogeography, the branch of biology that examines factors affecting the distribution of species on a historical time scale and global spatial scale. After defining the two main areas of biogeography, historical and ecological, the lecture discusses each in depth, examining examples and experiments that illustrate how biogeographic analysis helps explain patterns of species distributions. The lecture concludes by exploring the theory of island biogeography, which predicts the species richness of an area.