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Progress in Physical Geography
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Explanations for biogeographic tracks across the Pacific Ocean: a challenge for paleogeography and historical biogeography

Ronald Sluys

Expert-Centre for Taxonomic Identification, Institute for Systematics and Population Biology, University of Amsterdam, PO Box 94766, 1090 GT Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Amphi-Pacific organismal distributions form the ingredients of trans-Pacific biogeo graphic tracks, which may either be explained as the result of dispersal or vicariance. Under a vicariance paradigm the classical predrift reconstruction of Pangea cannot adequately explain trans- Pacific tracks. Alternative paleogeographic models that have been invoked as explanations for such tracks are discussed: the lost continent Pacifica, island integration, a new reconstruction of eastern Gondwanaland, and the expanding earth theory. None of these models is fully compatible with all geologic and biogeographic data available at present. Incompatibility of geological and biogeo graphical hypotheses could well result from different time scales involved. It is stressed that biogeographic data and theories should not be made subservient to geological theories but that both biological and geological information should shed their light on the causal explanation of trans- Pacific organismal tracks.

Key Words: biogeography • trans-Pacific tracks • dispersal • vicariance • Pacifica • island integration • Gondwanaland • expanding earth theory • paleogeography.

Progress in Physical Geography, Vol. 18, No. 1, 42-58 (1994)
DOI: 10.1177/030913339401800103
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