De Humboldt a Darwin: una inflexión clave en la historia de la biogeografía

Abstract

If compared with Humboldt’s Biogeography, the Biogeographical theses that Darwin develops in The Origin of the Species present two important new features. The first is theoretical: for Darwin the actual distribution of the living beings is more directly determined by biotic factors than by climate and soil. The second difference, however, is rather methodological: the Biogeography of Humboldt doesn’t consider the historical factors that could explain that distribution. Not only the idea of a genealogical relationship between the species is absent in the Humboldt’s point of view; but also the History of the Earth it is ignored like an important explanatory factor to understand the actual distribution of living beings.