Age and Area
Age and Area
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年龄和地区
DOI：
10.1086/394259
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发表时间：
1926
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Willis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
J. Willis
[《生物学季刊评论》无意通过争论让读者感到无聊。但早期对年龄和面积假说的攻击提出了一种极其片面的观点，似乎需要恢复平衡。为此，我们请年龄与面积理论的杰出创始人J.C. Willis博士准备了以下文章。现在，我们打算给我们的读者足够的时间充分消化和吸收这顿两道菜的大餐，然后再为他们提供更多带有年龄和地区风味的食物。-编辑。1 大约四年前，在上述标题下（来自其中提出的主要论文）我出版了一本书，引起了一些争议和批评。无论我的观点是否被接受，它们都重新唤起了人们对地理分布这一令人着迷的研究的兴趣，这一研究长期以来一直被不当搁置，并且已经提出了许多新的、有价值的工作。我的主要论文《年龄和面积》是以统计学为基础的，尽管人们已经习惯了在孟德尔主义、农业研究等方面的应用，但将其引入生物学工作有时会受到怨恨。许多年前，胡克发表了一份关于其影响的声明（I4，第一卷，第 438 页），即“似乎所有人都讨厌使植物地理学成为一门过于精确的科学；他们发现推测比采用归纳过程容易得多。追踪植物地理学的第一步植被创造的进展是为了了解不同地区出现的群体的比例，这种关系必须用数字来表达，这样才是有形的。”我的工作主要在于遵循这一建议，并展示以何种方式可以谨慎使用统计方法来帮助已经用于研究植物地理学复杂问题的各种方法（形态学、生态学和其他方法）。我的统计数据本来可能会被认为是业余爱好者的统计数据，但它得到了著名统计学家 Udny Yule 先生的大力支持，并以此为基础发表了一篇重要论文 (33)。正如我在书的第一句话中指出的那样，“植物（或动物）在地球表面的现有分布，通常是一个非常复杂的现象，是由于许多因素的相互作用造成的；”在同一段的末尾我说过，“对于所有这些，显然必须加上年龄，一个物种越老，它有时间覆盖的面积就越大。”人们常常只研究年龄和面积，就好像在没有其他知识分支的帮助下，它可以提供一把万能钥匙，只需将其插入锁中即可打开解决地理分配问题的主要途径。这些问题是生物学中出现的所有问题中最复杂和最令人费解的问题之一，并且没有应用所有可用的各种标准——形态学、细胞学、生态学、
[THE QUARTERLY REVIEW oi BIOLOGY has no intention of boring its readers with polemics. But the attack on the Age and Area hypothesis in an earlier number presented such an extremely one-sided view of the matter that it seemed desirable to restore the balance. Accordingly we have asked the distinguished originator of the theory of Age and Area, Dr. J. C. Willis, to prepare the following article. We now intend to give our readers ample time fully to digest and assimilate this two-course meal before offering them any more pabulum flavored with Age and Area.-THE EDITOR.1 A BOUT four years ago, under the above title (from the principal thesis therein brought forward) I published a book which has aroused some controversy and much criticism. Whether my views be accepted or not, they have reawakened interest in the fascinating study of geographical distribution, which for a long time has been in undue abeyance, and much new and valuable work has been brought out. My principal thesis, "Age and Area," is based upon statistics, whose introduction into biological work is sometimes resented, though one is becoming used to their employment in Mendelism, in agricultural research, etc. Many years ago, Hooker published a statement o the effect (I4, vol. i, p. 438) that "All seem to resent the making botanical geography too exact a science; they find it far easier to speculate than to employ the inductive process. The first step to tracing the progress of the creation of vegetation is to know the proportions in which the groups appear in different localities, a relation which must be expressed in numbers to be at all tangible." My work has consisted largely in following up this suggestion, and in showing in what manner the careful use of statistical methods can be applied to aid the various ways-morphological, ecological, and other-already in use for the investigation of the complex problems of botanical geography. My statistics, which might otherwise have been dismissed as those of an amateur, have received great support from the fact that they have been taken up by the well known statistician Mr. Udny Yule, who has based upon them an important paper (33). As I have pointed out in the first sentence of my book, "The existing distribution of a plant (or animal) upon the surface of the globe, which is often a very complex phenomenon, is due to the interaction of very many factors;" and at the end of the same paragraph I have said, "To all this it is obvious that age must be addedthe older a species is, the more area will it have had time to cover." People have often taken up Age and Area alone, as if it, without assistance from other branches of knowledge, were expected to provide a master-key that had only to be turned in the lock to open a main avenue to the solution of the problems of geographical distribution. These problems are among the most complex and puzzling of all that arise in biology, and without the application of all the various criteria that are available -morphological, cytological, ecological,