Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- PART I Introduction
- PART II Forest flora of eastern Africa
- PART III Forest fauna of eastern Africa
- 6 Biogeography of East African montane forest millipedes
- 7 The Linyphiid spider fauna (Araneae: Linyphiidae) of mountain forests in the Eastern Arc mountains
- 8 The montane butterflies of the eastern Afrotropics
- 9 Herpetofauna of the eastern African forests
- 10 The zoogeography of the montane forest avifauna of eastern Tanzania
- 11 Mammals in the forests of eastern Africa
- 12 Ecology of the Zanzibar red colobus monkey, Colobus badius kirkii (Gray, 1968), in comparison with other red colobines
- 13 The socioecology of interspecific associations among the monkeys of the Mwanihana rain forest, Tanzania: a biogeographic perspective
- PART IV Conservation
- Index
8 - The montane butterflies of the eastern Afrotropics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- PART I Introduction
- PART II Forest flora of eastern Africa
- PART III Forest fauna of eastern Africa
- 6 Biogeography of East African montane forest millipedes
- 7 The Linyphiid spider fauna (Araneae: Linyphiidae) of mountain forests in the Eastern Arc mountains
- 8 The montane butterflies of the eastern Afrotropics
- 9 Herpetofauna of the eastern African forests
- 10 The zoogeography of the montane forest avifauna of eastern Tanzania
- 11 Mammals in the forests of eastern Africa
- 12 Ecology of the Zanzibar red colobus monkey, Colobus badius kirkii (Gray, 1968), in comparison with other red colobines
- 13 The socioecology of interspecific associations among the monkeys of the Mwanihana rain forest, Tanzania: a biogeographic perspective
- PART IV Conservation
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In the eastern half of Africa the forests are mainly restricted to mountains and surrounded by savanna or even semi-desert. They have very appropriately been compared with an archipelago by White (1981). Their isolation and the high degree of endemism of flora and fauna raise questions about the evolutionary and geographic history of the forests as a whole and of the species living there. As with real islands the central questions are:
1. From the geographic point of view, have these islands always been isolated or is there a history of interconnections?
2. From the biological point of view, how are the species distributed and related, and where do their sister species live?
Starting from an allopatric speciation model there is a causative correlation between the two questions in such a way that the geographic history of the islands must have influenced the evolution of the species living in the islands. Biogeography is concerned with this correlation. To put it in a simple way, the biogeographic question is:
3. Have the species of a particular island originated on the spot (and if so, how about the ancestors) or are they colonists from elsewhere (either by jump dispersal or following a range expansion of the habitat), or a mixture of both (and if so, what are the proportions)?
With real islands the ecological difference between the island and its surroundings (the sea) is so extreme that an origin of the great majority of the terrestrial island organisms from the sea is most unlikely if not out of question.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Biogeography and Ecology of the Rain Forests of Eastern Africa , pp. 133 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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