Housekeeping & Refugia

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I agree completely with the diagnosis of Neil C. and James M. regarding our
recent spate of "confirmation" problems.  My posting was intended as a
simple reminder to other Pegasus mail users that there is an option on
their systems that can be problematic with respect to PaleoNet.  If people
are made aware of this potential problem perhaps we won't have to deal with
it (quite so often?) in the future.  The simple fact is that there are many
people subscribing to PaleoNet who are new to this e-mail business and who
are going to make errors along the way.  That's O.K. I think that the rest
of us are going to have to exhibit a little tolerance in this area and be
ready to offer help when our colleagues get into trouble.  One of the
purposes of PaleoNet is to raise the paleontological community's awareness
of and skills in this means of communication.  Therefore, let's all (myself
included) try to limit our discussion of this particular issue to
constructive comments on how to correct the problem.


On a more positive note, I recently read a short but interesting piece by
Paul Wignall entitled "Do Refugia Really Exist?" in which he tried to make
the case that what most of us call "refugia" (e.g., China, South America,
Boreal and Austral regions) in which faunas persist after they have gone
extinct in other "better known" areas are really examples of a monographic
effect.  The "better known" areas that we base much of our biogeography on
are better known only in the sense that they have been visited by western
paleontologists and their faunas described in the western literature.
Wignall goes on to point out that while individual environments can serve
as ecologic refugia (e.g., the mountain top and certain canyon habitats
that preserve some Pleistocene terrestrial species), it may be misleading
to speak of either small isolated continents or substantial areas of large
continents with their crazy-quilt patchwork of different habitats as
refugia sensu stricto.  On the other hand, there seems little doubt that
certain biotas (e.g., the marsupial fauna of Australia, aspects of the
Tertiary mammal fauna of South America) owe (or owed) their existence to
the physical isolation of large, heterogeneous assemblages of habitats.  To
my way of thinking these can (and perhaps should) be spoken of as refugia.
Are we, as I suspect, dealing with different concepts here (biogeographic
refugia and ecologic refugia, along with a category perhaps best described
as "monographic refugia") that are getting confused because we apply the
same unqualified term (refugia) to all?  Do refugia really exist?  Any
thoughts?

Norm MacLeod

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Norman MacLeod
Senior Research Fellow
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (Internet)
N.MacLeod@uk.ac.nhm (Janet)

Address: Dept. of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
                     Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 071-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  071-938-9277
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