Biogeography is called the discipline of science that aims to study the distribution of living beings on Earth, their origin and recorded changes, as well as the distribution of ecosystems and landscapes.
Biogeography is an interdisciplinary science that relates to other areas of study, mainly geography and biology. Therefore, these studies, analyzes and descriptions are more accurate in terms of describing the characteristics of each geographical space and the living beings that inhabit them.
Therefore, biogeography studies support concepts and terms of other branches of study such as botany, geology, zoology, ecology, climatology, cell biology, marine biology, genetics, physiology, microbiology, among others.
In this sense, the studies covered by biogeography are very broad: they go from the past to the present and seek to understand what the future of living beings and ecosystems will be.
Thus, biogeography seeks to explain how the evolution of life on Earth has been, how habitats, ecosystems have changed and how species have evolved.
Also, try to explain what have been the changes and particularities that aquatic and terrestrial environments have experienced because of their location, climate and the living beings that live there.
The analysis of the data obtained from the biogeography offers a historical and descriptive reflection of the behavior, adaptation and evolution that both living beings, such as the seas and the terrestrial environment have experienced with their reliefs in the different geographical areas that exist.
The living beings are distributed according to the biological and climatic evolution, as well as the earth and the seas.
Part of these changes arise from the movement of the tectonic plates (lithosphere and earth’s crust) and from the orogenesis, which refers to the changes that the earth’s crust undergoes, which can be shortened or folded as a result of the thrust movement of the plates.
In this sense, it can be determined that life on Earth differs from one place to another according to the availability it has to obtain energy from sunlight, as well as its aquatic, terrestrial and aerial characteristics.
For example, the equatorial zones receive more solar energy than those that are towards the poles and the climatic stations are less marked. Hence, the conditions of each region or ecosystem are different and sometimes unique.
Historical biogeography
Historical biogeography is a branch that is in charge of studying how the evolution, distribution and changes of living beings and the aquatic, terrestrial and aerial environments have been.
These studies are carried out through practical investigations that allow obtaining data from previous times to understand the present and the current state of biogeography.
Ecological Biogeography
It is a branch of biogeography that is responsible for studying the factors that define the distribution of current biogeography, so it also relies on the data obtained by historical biogeography. It also analyzes the phenomena involved in ecological time scales.
