Joe McCormick

speaker

4,118 appearances 8 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2026 last heard 14 Sep

Joe McCormick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 8.

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Stuff To Blow Your Mind · From the Vault: The Wallace Line, Part 2 · 22 Sep 2026 podcast

Um, by later in the nineteenth century, many biogeographers had started to think about zones instead of lines. voice-verified

For example, there is now a biogeographic region known as Wallacea, I've also heard it pronounced Wallaceia. voice-verified

uh so wallaceia or wallacea named after again alfred russell wallace uh this region was sort of proposed in the 1920s which is a faunal transition zone where you essentially have Australasian fauna to the east of the zone, Asian fauna to the west of the zone, and more of a mix within. voice-verified

Uh though the western boundary of Wallacea is still basically Wallace's line, passing between Bali and Lombok and in between Borneo and Sulawesi. voice-verified

So we're actually here creeping a bit back toward that gradual transition idea of animal ranges that we talked about in part one, uh though some of the divisions you see, especially between Bali and Lombok, are still actually quite striking. voice-verified

So Rob, I included for you to look at in our outline here. voice-verified

Here an illustration from one of the papers I was looking at. voice-verified

Uh, the region highlighted in red and all the islands within that is what is generally considered Wallacea today. voice-verified

Happy Valentine's Day. voice-verified

You get some marsupials. voice-verified

Okay. voice-verified

So uh Ali and Heaney write that in the last decade before their paper, even more new regions and boundary modifications have been proposed, and the authors paint a truly headache-inducing picture of the historical understanding of all this. voice-verified

As they say in their title, it is a tortuous tangle of ideas and labels. voice-verified

Uh, for example, I'm just gonna read one section of their abstract to give you an idea. voice-verified

Quote, Wallace's 1863 line is not the one he finally settled upon in 1910. voice-verified

Its path around Sulawesi was transferred from the west to the east of the island. voice-verified

Ideally, Huxley's Divide, and that's referring to Thomas Henry Huxley, who proposed a modification to this uh to the where the line goes. voice-verified

Uh Huxley's Divide, 1868, should carry his name rather than Wallace's. voice-verified

Wallace's, the latter never accepted the proposition. voice-verified

Leidecher's line of 1896 ought to be labeled the Heilprin-Lidecher Line in recognition of Angelo Heilprin's 1887 contribution. voice-verified

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