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This book grew out of the international conference, Where Worlds Collide:Faunal and floral migrations and evolution in SE Asia-Australasia which was sponsored by and held under the auspices of the University of New England Asia Centre (UNEAC) in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia from 29 November - 2 December, 1999, and the book contains thirty-one selected papers out of the forty-five oral and six poster papers presented at the conference. The multi-disciplinary conference brought together more than 100 scientists from 12 countries including geologists, palaeontologists, zoologists, botanists, entomologists, evolutionary biologists and archaeologists. Australian participants were from all over Australia and in particular, groups from the University of New England and Macquarie and Deakin Universities were well represented. The conference was a formal contribution to UNESCO International Geological Correalation Program Projects 411 Geodynamics of Gondwanaland-derived Terranes in E & S Asia, and 421 North Gondwana Mid-Palaeozoic biodynamics and 13 papers and posters were presented by members of these two projects at the meeting. For a report on the conference see http://www.une.edu.au/asiacenter/WWCRep.html

The multidisciplinary book focusses on the relationships and interactions between palaeobiogeography, biogeography, dispersal, vicariance, migrations and evolution of organisms in the the SE Asia-Australasian region. It investigates biogeographic links between SE Asia and Australasia which go back more than 500 million years and also focusses on the links between geological evolution and biological migrations and evolution in the region. It was in the SE Asian region that Alfred Russell Wallace established his biogeographic line, now known as Wallace’s Line, which was the beginning of biogeography. Wallace also independently developed his theory of evolution based on his work in this area. The book brings together, for the first time, geologists, palaeontologists, zoologists, botanists, entomologists, evolutionary biologists and archaeologists, in the one volume, to relate the region’s geological past to its present biological peculiarities. All four book editors are from the University of New England and UNE staff authored/co-authored seven of the book papers. All papers in this book have been subject to rigorous international peer review by at least two referees in addition to review by the editors.

CONTENTS

Preface
Penny van Oosterzee

Introduction
I. Metcalfe, J.M.B. Smith, M. Morwood, & I. Davidson

Section 1. Palaeogeographic Background

Palaeozoic and Mesozoic tectonic evolution and biogeography of SE Asia-Australasia
Ian Metcalfe

Cenozoic reconstructions of SE Asia and the SW Pacific: changing patterns of land and sea
Robert Hall

Section 2. Palaeozoic and Mesozoic geology and biogeography

Cambrian to Permian conodont biogeography in East Asia-Australasia
Robert S. Nicoll and Ian Metcalfe

Wallace Lines in Eastern Gondwana: Palaeobiogeography of Australasian Permian Brachiopoda.
N.W. Archbold

A review of the Early Permian flora from Papua (West New Guinea)
J. F. Rigby

A biogeographic comparison of the dinosaurs and associated vertebrate faunas from the Mesozoic of Australia and Southeast Asia
John A. Long and Eric Buffetaut

Early Middle Jurassic (Aalenian) radiolarian fauna from the Xialu chert in the Yarlung Zangbo Suture Zone, southern Tibet
Atsushi Matsuoka, Kenta Kobayashi, Toru Nagahashi, Qun Yang, Yujing Wang and Qinggao Zeng

Section 3. Wallace’s Line

Why Wallace drew the line: A re-analysis of Wallace’s bird collections in the Malay Archipelago and the origins of biogeography
Danielle Clode and Rory O’Brien

The linear approach to biogeography - should we erase the Wallace Line?
Walter R. Erdelen

Faunal exchange between Asia and Australia in the Tertiary as evidenced by recent butterflies
Rienk de Jong

Why does the Distribution of the Honeyeaters (Meliphagidae) conform so well to Wallace’s Line?
Hugh A. Ford

Human influences on vertebrate zoogeography: animal translocation and biological invasions across and to the east of Wallace’s line
Tom Heinsohn

Wallace’s line and marine organisms: the distribution of staghorn corals (Acropora) in Indonesia
Carden C. Wallace

Section 4. Plant biogeography and evolution

Why are there so many Primitive Angiosperms in the Rain Forests of Asia-Australasia?
R.J. Morley

Australian Paleogene vegetation and environments: evidence for palaeo–Gondwanan elements in the fossil records of Lauraceae and Proteaceae.
Anthony J. Vadala and David R. Greenwood

Vegetation and climate in lowland southeast Asia at the Last Glacial Maximum
A. Peter Kershaw, Dan Penny, Sander van der Kaars, Gusti Anshuri and Asha Thamotherampillai

The restiads invade the north: the diaspora of the Restionaceae.
Barbara G. Briggs

Evolutionary history of Alectryon in Australia
Karen J. Edwards and Paul A. Gadek

Section 5. Non Primates

Australasian distributions in Trichoptera (Insecta) - a frequent pattern or a rare case?
Wolfram Mey

Butterflies and Wallace’s Line: faunistic patterns and explanatory hypotheses within the south-east Asian butterflies
R. L. Kitching, R. Eastwood & K. Hurley

The vertebrate fauna of the Wallacean Island Interchange Zone: the basis of inbalance and impoverishment
Allen Keast

Dispersal versus vicariance, artifice rather than contest
B. Michaux

The Australian rodent fauna, flotilla’s, flotsam or just fleet footed?
H. Godthelp

Corroboration of the Garden of Eden Hypothesis
Thomas H. Rich, Timothy F. Flannery, Peter Trusler & Patricia Vickers-Rich

Mammals in Sulawesi: where did they come from and when, and what happened to them when they got there?
Colin Groves

Section 6. Primates

Radiation and Evolution of Three Macaque Species, Macaca fascicularis, M. radiata and M. sinica, as Related to Geographic Changes in the Pleistocene of Southeast Asia
Pan, R.-L, and Oxnard, C. E.

Borneo as a biogeographic barrier to Asian-Australasian migration
Douglas Brandon-Jones

Modelling Divergence, Inter-breeding and Migration: Species Evolution in a Changing World
Charles Oxnard and Ken Wessen

Early hominid occupation of Flores, East Indonesia, and its wider significance.
Mike Morwood

The requirements for human colonisation of Australia.
Iain Davidson

Did early hominids cross sea gaps on natural rafts?
J. M. B. Smith

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