300537 VO Biogeographie der Pflanzen (2008W)

Biogeography addresses the question, how and why biological diversity on time varies in space and time. After a short introduction to the discipline (incl. a historical overview), this lecture will cover the following topics: environmental setting and basic biogeographic principles (the geographic template, ecological foundations for species distributions, geography of communities); Earth history and fundamental biogeographic processes (dispersal, immigration, speciation, extinction, changing Earth, glaciation and biogeography of the Pleistocene); evolutionary history of lineages and biotas (geography of diversification, reconstructing the history of lineages and of biotas); ecological biogeography (island biogeography, areography, ecogeographic rules, diversity gradients). In the seminary part of this course, these aspects will be presented and discussed using recent literature (reviews or original research articles).