ABSTRACT
This book discusses many distribution patterns seen in and around New Zealand, and explanations are suggested for most of these. The Earth and its living layer exist together and interact in complex ways that are studied by ecologists. In addition, the Earth and its life evolve together. This concept was controversial when it was first proposed (Croizat, 1964) and is still disputed (McDowall, 2010a,b), but it has gained wide acceptance and is now often quoted as an anonymous maxim (e.g., Carroll, 2010: 126). Many aspects of distribution-elevational and latitudinal ranges, for example-display obvious correlations with aspects of the environment. Yet many distributions are not explained by current ecological variables. These probably result from changes over evolutionary time, and they have been accounted for either by Earth’s history, as in Croizat’s (1964) model, or by chance dispersal, a process that does not depend on geological change.
