Elementary Zoology, Second Edition

by Vernon L. Kellogg

Geographical distribution.—It is a matter of common knowledge with all of us that there are no wild lions or camels or kangaroos or monkeys or ostriches or nightingales in North America. Ostriches are found only in Africa and South America, kangaroos only in Australia, lions only in Asia and Africa. On the other hand there are no opossums in Europe or grizzly bears or rattlesnakes anywhere else in the world than in this country. That is, certain kinds of animals have a certain limited range of occurrence or distribution. It is obvious, too, that certain animals live only on land, while others live only in water, and of these latter some are restricted to the ocean, while others live only in fresh water. All of the facts regarding the dispersion or diffusion of animals on land and in water make up the science of the geographical distribution of animals, or, as it is sometimes called, zoogeography. Under this subject are included not only the facts of the present actual distribution or occurrence of animals over the world, but the facts concerning the reasons for this distribution, the modes of travel and dispersion, the character and influence of barriers to the spread, and the results, in the adaptation of old forms and the production of new forms, of the phenomena of distribution.

Just as maps are made to show graphically the facts of political geography, which concerns the position and extent of the various powers and States which claim the allegiance of the people, and the facts of physical geography, which concerns the physical character of the earth's surface, so maps are made to show the geographical distribution of animals. Because of the great numbers of animal species no one map can show the distribution of all species, but a series of maps of the world or of a continent or of a State or county or more limited region could be made (and many such have been made) showing the distribution of selected species. In a map of a limited locality, say of a few square miles, the occurrence and distribution of most of the commoner and more familiar animals can be shown, and each high school should possess such a map (see technical note at beginning of this chapter).

Laws of distribution.—The laws governing the distribution of animals over the earth's surface have been recently[20] expressed in a simple statement as follows: Every species of animal is found in every part of the earth unless (a) its individuals have been unable to reach this region on account of barriers of some sort; or (b) having reached it, the species is unable to maintain itself, through lack of capacity for adaptation, through severity of competition with other forms, or through destructive conditions of environment; or (c) having entered and maintained itself it has become so altered in the process of adaptation as to become a species distinct from the original type.

Modes of migration and distribution.—That animals should be continually trying to extend their range is obvious from what we know of their rapid increase by multiplication. In a region which can provide food for but one thousand wolves, there is a production each year of several times one thousand. These new wolves must struggle among themselves for food, or migrate, if possible, to new regions as yet not inhabited by wolves. The wolf's mode of migration or distribution is walking or running, and so with other mammals except the bats and aquatic forms. Birds and bats can fly, and can thus migrate more swiftly, farther, and over barriers which would stop mammals. Most insects can fly. Worms can only crawl and very slowly at that. Fishes can swim, but if they are in a landlocked sheet of water, they cannot go beyond its confines. Marine animals can migrate from ocean to ocean, and land animals from continent to continent unless checked by barriers (see next paragraph).

But besides such voluntary and independent modes of distribution long journeyings may be made involuntarily, or by a passive migration as it may be called. Parasites, for example, are carried by their hosts in all their travels; the tiny Tardigrada and Rotifera, which can be desiccated and yet restored to active life by coming again into water, are carried in the dried mud on the feet of birds or other animals. On floating objects in rivers or in ocean currents land-animals may be carried long distances. Man, the greatest traveller of all, is responsible for the widened distribution of many animals. Thus have come to us in ships from Europe the black and brown rats, the English sparrow, the Hessian fly, the commonest cockroaches of our houses and many other forms. And these animals have been carried involuntarily all over the United States in railway-cars and wagons.

Barriers to distribution.—As is indicated in the paragraph on the modes of migration, a considerable sheet of water is obviously a barrier to the further travelling of a walking or crawling land-animal, although no barrier to a winged form. Similarly a strip of land is a barrier to a strictly aquatic animal as a fish. Or a high fall in the stream may serve as an insuperable barrier, making it impossible for any fish below the fall to reach the upper part of the stream. Numerous cases of this kind are known in the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevada, where a stream may be well supplied with trout below a fall, and quite bare of these fish above the fall. In the Yosemite Valley in California trout live in the Merced River below the great Vernal and Nevada falls, but above these falls the Merced contains no trout. To fresh-water swimming animals salt water may be a barrier; thus some kinds of fresh-water fishes are limited to one of two near-by streams although the mouths of these streams empty near each other into the ocean. The amphibious batrachians, at home in fresh water and on land, are killed by contact with sea-water. Earthworms also are killed by salt water. Thus the narrowest ocean strait is as effective a barrier to these animals as a whole sea. High mountain ranges and broad deserts are barriers to many land-animals, partly because of the physical obstacles, partly because of the differences in temperature and in food-supply.

Temperature and climate (as distinct from temperature) and the ocean are the three great barriers when we consider the animal kingdom as a whole, and look for the causes which determine the chief zoogeographical divisions of the earth's surface. Most of the tropical animals cannot endure frost, hence the isothermal line of frost is a line across which few tropical animals venture. Most arctic animals are enfeebled by heat, and the isothermal line which marks off the region in which frost occurs the year round is another great zoogeographical boundary. But while these lines are limits for localized species, some animals, as birds, especially, keep within a relatively uniform temperature by migrations across these lines. It should be borne in mind that the gradual decrease in temperature met with in going north or south from the tropics is also met in the ascent of high mountains. The summits of lofty peaks, even in the tropics, are truly arctic in character; they are snow-covered, and the animals and plants on them are truly arctic. Thus in the ascent of a single mountain a whole series of life-zones from tropical to arctic can be traversed.

Climate, as distinct from temperature, establishes limits of distribution. The animals of Eastern North America accustomed to a humid atmosphere cannot live in the dry plains and deserts of the West. Closely associated with climate is the nature of the plant-growth covering the land; here are forests and luxuriant meadows, there are sparse tough grasses of the dry plateau. The limits of a special kind of plant-growth often are the limits of distribution of certain animals.