This sentence marks the birth of biogeography: to know where species come from you need to know not only the species' evolutionary history, but also the geological history of the region where they occurred. Wallace's explanation was that he believed 'the western part to be a separated portion of continental Asia, the eastern the fragmentary prolongation of a former pacific continent.' Instead, the forests of Lombok echoed with the loud strangled screams of Australian cockatoos, and honey-eaters flitted through the trees. Where were the oriental barbets, fruit-thrushes and woodpeckers, the same Asian birds he had seen in Malaysia, Borneo and Bali, the latter clearly visible across the strait? Walking up the beach, away from the thunderous sound of the rollers, he heard the raucous call of the helmeted friarbird, an Australian honeyeater. The giant swells of the Indian Ocean, squeezing through the deep strait, dumped a relieved Wallace onto the steep beach of Ampanam Bay. The strait between Bali and Lombok is 25 kilometres wide, slicing between two volcanoes, perfect cones rising out of the mists.Ĭrossing from Bali to Lombok, Wallace watched them, in 1856, glowing with the rays of the evening sun at the end of a tropical day. Source: The Alfred Russel Wallace website * Wallace wrote over 1000 articles and 22 books including The Malay Archipelago, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, Island Life and Darwinism. * Darwin published Wallace's essay On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type without Wallace's knowledge along with his own writings on the subject in August 1958 under the title On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties And On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection Darwin then published Origin of the Species in 1859. His best known zoological discoveries are probably Wallace's golden birdwing butterfly ( Ornithoptera croesus) and Wallace's standard-wing bird of paradise ( Semioptera wallacei), both from Bacan island, and Rajah Brooke's birdwing butterfly ( Trogonoptera brookiana) from Borneo. * Wallace spent eight years from 1845 - 1862 exploring the Malay archipelago accumulating a vast collection of insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and shells. * British naturalist and explorer known for his work on biogeography and evolutionary theory. ^ to top The Wallace Line Alfred Russel Wallace * Born 8 January 1823. The great green-winged Ornithoptera, which Wallace later dubbed 'the Prince among butterfly tribes', the man-like orangutan whose origin sparked Wallace's curiosity as had no mammal other than man himself, and the bird of paradise, which had never been exhibited in Europe, were other features of the Archipelago's giddy, divergent forms of life. Wallace had heard of the monstrous flowers called rafflesia that are "three-feet-wide and weigh 24 pounds!". The richest variety of fruits and the most precious spices were indigenous there. The first visit by a European naturalist to the Malay Archipelago had occurred only in 1776. Situated on the equator and bathed by the tepid water of three great tropical oceans, this area of 13,000 islands displayed an unheard-of, wonderful variety of species. This line is the narrow strait between Bali and Lombok.įrom 20th April 1854 to the 1st of April 1862, Wallace trekked the Malay Archipelago, today's Indonesia, wallowing in its wildlife. It became known as the Wallace Line and it is the most famous and most discussed biogeographical boundary in the world. This line separated marsupials from tigers, and honeyeaters and cockatoos from barbets and trogons. In the mid-19th century, Wallace discovered a mysterious line that separated two different faunal universes. A man from another time, the other man was a lanky, gentle, short-sighted English explorer and naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace. In the late 1990s I became obsessed with another man, not my husband. Alfred Russel Wallace (seen here in 1908) is often referred to as 'the father of biogeography' in recognition of his work examining the geographical distribution of animals (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
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