Biogeographic memory

[John R. Grehan]

>
>As a matter of fact - for the ratites the discussion in the text deals
>with "main massings" based on numbers of families. Supposing that families
>are monophyletic, that does bring in a little phylogeny. Not much.


There was more discussion of phylogeny in Craw's earlier work, but then
whether that's 'enough' for anyone I leave to individual preference.



>In this case - a scheme in which only four baselines are allowed.
>If a track is not Atlantic, Pacific or Southern - well, then it must be
>Indian Ocean.

These, along with the Northern and Southern oceans are the four major
tectonic basins so if one
is interested in the spatial relationships of distributions to those basins
then that's the
baseline reference. It does not preclude others

>This way one runs the risk of ignoring the evidence (plainly there in the
>examples) that there are different general patterns crossing the Indian
>Ocean basis in different ways.

Of course, and these can be recognized as different standard tracks with
overlapping or nested
localities - still within a common baseline with respect to a particular
ocean basin. Even Croizat's (1958)
map shows different tracks across common ocean basins.

>As far as I can make out, it is also a long way from Croizat's approach -
>Croizat plainly refused to believe anything that was contradicted by the
>distribution patterns he observed.

Not sure what the point is here.

>Croizat's volatile temper and his peculiar style have a lot to answer for.

I don' know about his 'temper' as I never met him. As for his style, its
not all that
peculiar. Seems to be a bit of a red herring. If one were to pick on
Croizat's 'temper'
then one might also pick on some of his opponents who seemed to be quite'
nasty (e.g. the rumors spread about Croizat being in an insane asylum).

John Grehan
Frost Entomological Museum
Pennsylvania State University
Department of Entomology
501 ASI Building
University Park, PA 16802. USA.

Phone: (814) 863-2865
Fax: (814) 865-3048

Frost Museum
http://www.ento.psu.edu/home/Frost/index.html