Gondwana, vicariance biogeography and the New York School revisited

Abstract

The many methods of biogeographic analysis proposed in recent years generate artefactual results that impede understanding, discovery and progress. Eliminating geographic paralogy from data reduces or eliminates artefactual interpretation. Recent cladistic studies of extant Nothofagus agree in showing only three informative nodes relevant to intercontinental relationships. In cladistic representations of global distributions, Gondwana is at or near the base of the geographically informative nodes, which force Gondwana to appear as a centre of origin of modern life in general. Centres of origin are artefacts of comparison based on geographically uninformative and paralogous nodes. Postmodern revivals of dispersalism fail to acknowledge, explain, avoid, learn from and improve on the artefactual centres of origin of the 20th century dispersalism, as represented particularly by the New York School: W. D. Matthew (1871–1930), K. P. Schmidt (1890–1957), G. G. Simpson (1902–1984), P. J. Darlington, Jr (1904–1983) and G. S. Myers (1905–1985).