Question: what is biogeographer?

Asked by blahblah to Dustin on 14 May 2012.

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  1. Photo: Dustin WelbourneDustin Welbourne
    answered on 14 May 2012:

    Hi blahblah,

    A biogeographer is a person who attempts to understand the distribution of where plants and animals live. On top of this, we try to understand why they live in those areas and why not in other areas.

    Along with trying to understand the where in space animals live, we also try and understand the where in time they live, and then again, why.

    I find it a greatly interesting science as we use techniques from all sorts of fields of science, from genetics, biology, physiology, geomorphology, climatology, palaeontology and more to attempt to answer questions.

    So one question we might ask is why does Australia have the types of snakes it has? This means we have to understand where all snakes live in Australia and close by, and when they first got to Australia. We need to know what the climate and landform factors were at the time of getting here. We need to understand what drives the evolution of those animals and what physical traits of those animals stop them from exploiting other areas of Australia.

    Does this help?

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Comments

  1. Photo: ArtiArti
    commented on 14 May 2012:

    Dustin, nice explanation. This is another example of the blurring between different scientific fields/disciplines when it comes to the kind of work scientists do – it doesn’t matter how you categorise what you do, in the grand scheme of things, it is all science!

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