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- Title
Beyond Wallace's line – dispersal of Oriental and Australo-Papuan land-snails across the Indo-Australian Archipelago.
- Authors
Hausdorf, Bernhard
- Abstract
Wallace's line is often considered the prime example of a biogeographical barrier that abruptly separates two distinct biota. Here, I quantify the faunal changes across the Indo-Australian Archipelago using distribution data of 1863 terrestrial snail species from 28 islands and Peninsular Malaysia. It is estimated that 23% and 36%, respectively, of the variation in species and genus composition of the island faunas can be explained by current geography. The Oriental–Australian biotic interchange resulted in a gradual change of the composition of the land-snail faunas across the Indo-Australian Archipelago. The border of the Sunda Shelf, Wallace's line, does not represent a more severe barrier than other straits through the archipelago. Subdivision of the archipelago into the islands on the Sunda Shelf and the oceanic islands does not explain a significant part of the variation in composition of the faunas in addition to that explained by current geography. The faunas of the oceanic island groups are more similar to those of neighbouring island groups than to each other. The island groups between the Sunda and the Sahul Shelves do not share a distinct biotic element. Thus, Wallacea does not form a separate biogeographic region and the term should not be used in this sense any more.
- Subjects
INDO-Australian Region; SNAILS; AUSTRALIAN robins; LIFE zones; ANIMAL species
- Publication
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2019, Vol 185, Issue 1, p66
- ISSN
0024-4082
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/zoolinnean/zly031