Australian Comparative Phytogeography: A Review

This review covers the historical biogeography of flowering plants within Australia. Comprehensive reviews of this topic appeared in the first and second editions of the introductory volume of the Flora of Australia (Barlow 1981; Crisp et al. 1999; the latter here after referred to as CWL). These reviews dealt comprehensively with the plant biogeography literature at the time. The present review is intended as an update and a critical review of the development of terrestrial plant biogeography in Australia over the past two decades, with a particular focus on developments after CWL. It contrasts with CWL in focusing on methods that deal predominantly with comparative approaches to plants and their distributional data rather than providing an analysis of single-taxon studies. While an updated analysis of single-taxon studies is necessary, it is beyond the scope of the current chapter as it involves novel reinterpretation of the original data sets and the results of very different methodological approaches. While globally the number of studies focused on intracontinental plant biogeography is somewhat smaller than those with an emphasis on intercontinental biogeography, there remains a considerable literature to cover, even when looking only at the past 20 years.