Hello and welcome. This. The Science of Birds podcast is a lighthearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners.

This episode, which is number 62, is all about the major geographic divisions among birds across the planet.

Why are Bowerbirds found only in Australia and on the

islands of New Guinea? Why are the birds you see in India so different from those in China? Does North

America have any unique, endemic bird families? Questions like these fall within the domain of biogeography. Biogography is the

study of where living things are found and why they're found there, both in the present and the

past. Today, we'll be sketching out the big picture of what types of birds are found where across the world map.

By learning the basics of bird biogography, you can get a deeper appreciation for the uniqueness of bird communities in different parts of the world.

And for any bird you happen to be looking at through your binoculars, biogeography can give you a better sense of how that bird fits into the epic story of life on

earth, against the backdrop of drifting continents, changing climates, sea levels and mountain

chains rising and falling, and the constantly shifting distributions of ecosystems.

I've told you before that I love me some biogeography.

I really do.

Almost as much as I love pizza or coffee.

So I'm super excited to talk about this stuff.

The specific focus for today will be the topic of biogeographic realms.

Biogeographic realms are the largest chunks of real estate we can divide Earth's land surface into,

specifically with respect to the distributions of living things.

We touched on this topic back in episode 46, which was about Wallace's line.

In that episode, I was telling you about the boundary between two biogeographic realms in Indonesia.

In today's episode, we're zooming out to look at the entire planet, at how it's

divided into a number of distinct and marvelous realms of avian diversity.

...