Biogeography, or the spatial distribution of biological diversity, has been studied since Darwin and Wallace in the 1800s. Their studies, and most later studies, concentrated on macroscopic organisms, mostly animals and plants, and many differences between species were observed, often correlated with geographical isolation. The theoretical basis for these differences was established later and is still being refined. The theories of island biogeography have been extremely influential in many fields of biology (Bell et al., 2005). Critical to biogeographical studies are comparable organisms from different locations with quantifiable diversity, often sequence diversity.
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