The biogeographic contributions of Léon Croizat (1894–1982) and the conflictive relationships with his intellectual descendants and critics are analysed. Croizat’s panbiogeography assumed that vicariance is the most important biogeographic process and that dispersal does not contribute to biogeographic patterns. Dispersalist biogeographers criticized or avoided mentioning panbiogeography, especially in the context of the “hardening” of the Modern Synthesis. Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History associated panbiogeography with Hennig’s phylogenetic systematics, creating cladistic biogeography. On the other hand, a group of (...) New Zealand biologists formalized Croizat’s original concepts and soon began arguing with cladistic biogeographers over the relative merits of their approaches. In Latin America, panbiogeography and cladistic biogeography were incorporated as parts of an integrative approach. A recent development, molecular panbiogeography, is based on the use of molecular phylogenetic data. The current practice shows that some authors insist on considering panbiogeography as the only appropriate approach and vicariance as the only relevant process, whereas others accept Croizat’s dictum “Earth and life evolve together” as a useful guide to understanding broad, general patterns, but recognize that dispersal also contributes substantially to biotic assembly. The framework of integrative pluralism allows to explain the complexities of the biogeographic processes involved in biotic assembly without the need of unification on a large scale. This historical analysis intersects with the existing historiography of the Modern Synthesis and may provide some insights on the dynamics of integrative pluralism, which may be especially relevant in the current development of the Extended Synthesis. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the variety and richness of the taxonomical practices between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. During these decades, zoologists and paleontologists came up with different quantitative practices in order to classify their data in line with the new biological principles introduced by Charles Darwin. Specifically, I will investigate Florentino Ameghino’s mathematization of mammalian dentition and the quantitative practices and visualizations of several German-speaking paleontologists at the beginning of the twentieth century. In (...) so doing, this paper will call attention to the visual and quantitative language of early twentieth-century systematics. My analysis will therefore contribute to a prehistory of the statistical frame of mind in biology, a study which has yet to be written in full. Second, my work highlights the productive intertwinement between biological practices and philosophical frameworks at the turn of the nineteenth century. Deeply rooted in Kantian bio-philosophy, several biologists sought to find rules in order to apply ordering principles to chaotic taxonomic information. This implies the necessity to investigate the neglected role of Kantian and Romantic bio-philosophy in the unfolding of twentieth-century biology. (shrink)

Alexander von Humboldt’s depictions of mountain vegetation are among the most iconic nineteenth century illustrations in the biological sciences. Here we analyse the contemporary context and empirical data for all these depictions, namely the _Tableau physique des Andes_ (1803, 1807), the _Geographiae plantarum lineamenta_ (1815), the _Tableau physique des Îles Canaries_ (1817), and the _Esquisse de la Géographie des plantes dans les Andes de Quito_ (1824/1825). We show that the Tableau physique des Andes does not reflect Humboldt and Bonpland’s field (...) data and presents a flawed depiction of plant occurrences and vertical succession of vegetation belts, arising from Humboldt’s misreading of La Condamine’s description (1751). Humboldt's 1815 depiction, by contrast, shows a distribution of high-vegetation belts that is consistent with La Condamine’s description, while the 1824 depiction drops innovations made in 1815 and returns to simply showing numerous species’ names, thus not applying Humboldt’s own earlier zonation framework. Our analysis of contemporary reactions to Humboldt’s TPA includes Francis Hall’s posthumously published 1834 illustration of Andean plant zonation near Quito and Humboldt’s reaction to Hall’s critique. Throughout his work on plant geography, Humboldt disregarded some of his own observations, or confused them. At stake was his reputation as an innovator in the field of plant geography and a discoverer of the sequence of high-elevation vegetation belts on the world’s mountains. (shrink)