Antarctica and biogeography

[John Grehan]

Those taxa that are in South America and the southwest Pacific, to the
exclusion of Africa, may not be 'Gondwanic' at all, but Pacific accretions.

John

At 09:56 AM 4/5/2004 -0500, Ken Kinman wrote:
>John,
>      Agreed.  My disagreement is with those biogeographers (in general)
> who leave Antarctica out.  For the southern Pacific, I would like to see
> a lot more map orientations that are about halfway between the typical
> polar and typical equator-centered orientations.  That way Antarctica
> wouldn't be quite so "stretched out".  And on panbiogeographic maps that
> would often put the track closer to the center.  This may be due to my
> "Darwinian dispersalist" leanings, but I still think it would be more
> informative.  Especially for gondwanan taxa that occur in both South
> America and southwest Pacific.
>          --------- Cheers,
>                             Ken
>********************************************************
>John Grehan wrote:
>It seems I misunderstood Ken's characterization. His statement that
>Antarctica being left off the map when it is not involved with a locality
>record is correct. This is probably more a function of the map orientation
>which would require the outline of Antarctic across the base of the entire
>map. I would find this somewhat cumbersome. However, it is a matter of
>personal choice rather than that of the panbiogeographic method. When
>polar views are presented Antarctica is most definitely included (which
>Ken should know), and there is nothing stopping any panbiogeographer or
>other biogeographer such as ken putting Antarctica in. It should be
>further pointed out that non-panbiogeographic maps often leave Antarctica
>out so Ken's disagreement also lies with biogeographers in general. As for
>me, I do not see any deficiency in leaving Antarctica out in non-polar
>views. It does not change the track and it does not change the
>interpretation so there is nothing 'misleading' (A Pacific track is still
>a Pacific track, for example).

Dr. John Grehan
Director of Science and Collections
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Parkway
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jgrehan at sciencebuff.org
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