Entre el escarnio y el encomio: Léon Croizat y la panbiogeografía

Abstract

The Italian botanist Leon Croizat (18941982) is a controversial figure in the most recent history of biogeography. Based on the metaphor that "life and earth evolve together" which means that geographic barriers and biotas coevolve Croizat developed a new biogeographic methodology, which he named 'panbiogeography '. This method was basically to plot distributions of organisms on maps and connect the disjunct distribution areas or collection localities together with lines called tracks. Croizat found that individual tracks for unrelated groups of organisms were repetitive, and considered the resulting summary lines as generalized tracks which indicated the preexistence of ancestral biotas, subsequently freagmented by tectonic and/or climatic changes. Some authors, mainly those belonging to the dispersalist establishment, have dismissed Croizat's contributions, considering him as idiosyncratic, or a member of a lunatic freinge. Others have considered Croizat as one of the most original thinkers of modern comparative biology, whose contributions advanced the foundations of a new synthesis between earth and life sciences. Following its synthesis with phylogenetic systematics, Croizat's panbiogeography has emerged as being central to vicariance or cladistic biogeography. In spite of this synthesis, some authors currently agree in the distinction between Croizat's panbiogeography and cladistic biogeography.