The Scientific Study of the Distribution of Animals and Plants Animal and plant species are not global in distribution; nor are they distributed at random around the globe. Their ranges are constrained by part events and by past and present environments; so we can speak, in broad terms, of historical and ecological biogeography, though these
Evolutionary biogeography addresses the historical relationship between geographic space and the processes of biological differentiation, such as speciation and adaptation. Darwin observed that the evolution of related species in different locations required that they also share a common ancestral location he called the “center of origin.” Darwin thought this requirement was so obvious that it