My Year of Darwin 5/23/2014: Darwin the biogeographer

 

"We shall hereafter see this law of aquatic forms, whether marine or fresh water, being less peculiar at any given point of the earth's surface than the terrestrial forms of the same classes, strikingly illustrated in the shells, and in a lesser degree in the insects of this archipelago."  Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

What Darwin is saying is that aquatic organisms are wide-ranging, such that one finds a marine species over the coastline of an entire continent. Terrestrial organisms, however, are more peculiar- those species are found in a particular valley or land formation. 

Darwin is known by many things to many people. Until now, Darwin is mostly a geologist, to a lesser extent a sociologist (although a good sociologist might scoff at that assertion) and to a lesser extent an ecologist. And now we can add a biogeographer to the list. 
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Was scheduled to go in the field today but only two people want to go out and it may just rain. May go see Godzilla at 1. 

My Year of Darwin (2/2/2015)

"The often-repeated description of the stately palm, and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of this story, that feather and dirt-feeding and parasitic insects and spiders should be the first inhabitants of newly formed oceanic land." -Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle 

Voyage of the Beagle was Darwin's first book and here he is already challenging long-held theories -this one of island succession. Would be an interesting exercise to do a stable isotope analysis of the organisms on St. Paul's Island. 

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Splitting time between the natural gas paper and editorial duties.. and laundry.