Biogeografía y geología: una reflexión sobre su interacción a partir de tres casos caribeños

Abstract

Biogeography and geology ran as parallel disciplines until theories of continental drift, seafloor spreading and plate tectonics were formally accepted. Since then, their interaction has not been easy and the incorporation of geological information into biogeographical studies has become a challenge not always successfully overcome by biogeographers. Three Caribbean cases are presented to illustrate three different ways of incorporating geological and paleogeographical information into biogeographical models: selection of a particular geological model and construction of a combined model, selection of a marine paleo-currents pattern, and paleogeographical reconstruction. In each case the influence of geological information on the explanations about the origin of the Caribbean biota is discussed: In the three models the selection of the explicative biogeographic mechanism (dispersal or vicariance) was determined by the geographic component, product of geologic and tectonic processes not always well understood and interpreted by biogeographers