Five decades of biogeography: A view from the Journal of Biogeographyстатья из журнала
Аннотация: The first issue of Journal of Biogeography (JBI) was published by Blackwell Scientific in March 1974. Volume 1 summed to 279 pages over four issues, and its remit was broad—biology, geography, palaeontology, genetics, human modification of the environment, effects on biotic distributions, their medical relevance, and more (Watts, 1974). Although other journals carried some biogeographical papers (e.g. see Cowell & Parker, 2004), JBI remained the sole journal dedicated to publishing biogeography until the early 1990s when two sister titles—Biodiversity Letters and Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters—were created to accommodate growth in the field (Figure 1), the rise of global environmental concerns (Stott, 1991) and momentum captured in newly coined concepts such as ‘biodiversity’ (Stott, 1993). These sister journals metamorphosed into the now more familiar titles Diversity and Distributions (DDI) and Global Ecology and Biogeography (GEB) in the late 1990s to publish the burgeoning studies of, respectively, biological invasions (Richardson, 1998) and macroecology (Whittaker, 1999). Throughout, JBI continued to act as the most inclusive venue for biogeography, its content shifting through the years as the interests of authors and readers waxed and waned. The commitment to represent the full breadth of biogeography has remained a constant since (Linder, 2016; Whittaker, 2005), as has the commitment that JBI should be a journal about biogeography, by biogeographers, and for biogeographers both as authors and as readers (Linder, 2016). Changes in biogeographical journals also have reflected changes in publishing. JBI, for example, transitioned from its initial sub-A4-sized format to A4 in 1989 (Whittaker, 2014). The editorial introducing GEB also noted the adoption of email for handling reviews, encouraged authors to submit electronic versions of revised manuscripts ‘by disk’, and referred to the journal website as a key source of information; papers could be downloaded as PDF files, and HTML versions were on the immediate horizon (Whittaker, 1999). A half-decade later, ‘Online-Early’ was imminent, allowing digital publication online before print issues and citation using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI); referral pathways, to transfer articles among sister journals, were starting to take shape (Whittaker, 2005). Around the same time, Online Supporting Information was enabled, which accompanied >80% of articles in JBI a decade later (Whittaker, 2014); the proportion for research articles is now >95%. Linder (2016) remarked on the emergence of data repositories, the surge of papers relying on ‘recycled’ data, and the need for recognition of data authors, deposition of new data, and policies for data access. These have been part and parcel of a suite of double-edged issues that have risen to prominence over the past decade. For example, Open Access publication, which should democratize science, has encouraged predatory journals and raises questions about equity of access and profiteering (Carey, 2016; Linacre, 2022); the speed of the publication process, which can accelerate progress, also exacerbates pressures to ‘publish [prolifically] or perish’ and degrades the quality of science, community and ‘work–life’ balance (Hortal et al., 2019); ‘cascade’ journals that should reduce workload by re-using editorial and peer reviews, oftentimes refer articles to in-house open access journals with high article processing charges (Hortal et al., 2019) and balkanize science pre-publication; and misunderstandings of peer review and editorial processes can exacerbate cries for change that may inadvertently undermine efforts to maintain or increase equity (Dawson et al., 2014). These, and other issues (e.g. Meynard et al., 2021), continue to challenge us today, a point to which we return when discussing the journal's philosophy on publishing. Changes in the publishing landscape—along with changes in technology, biogeographical concepts and the community of biogeographers (Ladle et al., 2015)—are expected to manifest in changes in the representation of research topics in journals. Thus, for example, papers on invasion biology declined in JBI between the 1990s and 2000s (Figure 2a), though they increased during the same period in other biogeography journals (Figure 2b), likely influenced by DDI. The refocusing of DDI on conservation biogeography in 2005 both elevated and likely influenced the distribution of papers in the discipline (Richardson & Whittaker, 2010; Whittaker et al., 2005) with DDI and JBI taking the lions' share. Other topics have featured heavily in JBI as new approaches and concepts arose and established their roles in the disciplinary landscape. Island biogeography became a mainstay of biogeography in the 1980s and JBI has continued to be a primary outlet for high-quality and innovative studies (e.g. Whittaker et al., 2008). JBI became a popular venue for phylogeography during the 2000s, spurred by a rapid series of advances in genetic and computational methods and an eponymous very highly cited book (Avise, 2000). Phylogeography became the most substantial fraction of papers in JBI during the 2010s, mirroring its popularity more broadly (Figure 2c), though recent developments show phylogeography is ripe for rejuvenation (Dawson et al., 2022; McGaughran et al., 2022). The recent increase in JBI articles addressing functional biogeography and related areas in the last decade is particularly noteworthy, given the relatively recent origin of many of the concepts and approaches (Violle et al., 2014). These kinds of observations suggest JBI has played an important role in setting the biogeographical agenda and in reflecting advances in biogeographical thinking since its inception. To pay tribute to this history, we have compiled selected highly cited articles published in JBI over the past five decades in two virtual issues to celebrate the journal's 50th anniversary. The first virtual issue is a compilation of the five most highly cited papers per quinquennium since JBI's inception in 1974, which provides a sampling of priority interests through time. On occasion, these appear to coincide with the number of submissions, for example, in the 1980s, when island biogeography provides both a substantial proportion of papers and 2 of the 10 most cited articles. But other periods see a mismatch; for example, phylogeography is one of the most frequent topics of papers in the last two decades, but rarely yields a most-highly cited article; by contrast, species distribution modelling is over-represented in the most-cited lists relative to the proportion of publications. Intriguingly, we are increasingly seeing the integration of phylogeography and species distribution modelling which together provide additional insight into biogeographical dynamics and parallels burgeoning integration of geological and genomic data (e.g. Ribas et al., 2022). The second virtual issue presents the 50 most highly cited articles of all time. This compilation reveals an unmistakable concentration: about two-thirds of most highly cited papers were published in the decade between the early 2000s and early 2010s. Particularly, species distribution modelling emerges in highly cited papers throughout this period (Araújo & Guisan, 2006; Liu et al., 2013; Pearson et al., 2007; Radosavljevic & Anderson, 2014), as well as conceptual pieces on drivers of diversity (Brown, 2014; Fahrig, 2013), distributions (Briggs & Bowen, 2012), islands (Whittaker et al., 2008) and phylogeography (Avise, 2009), which to some extent also correspond to topics that saw a lot of traffic. This could be a sign of a particularly exciting time in biogeography; it also could be related to structural increases in accessibility due to online publishing, data availability, analytical software, community coalescing around the eponymous society, or a combination of these and other phenomena. Whatever the cause, the papers from this period clearly were timely and consequential, piquing comment and curiosity. Considering both lists together, in the coming years, we can expect a suite of recent papers to join the pantheon of most highly cited papers of all time. Their topics sometimes further develop already high-profile topics, for example, habitat fragmentation and species distribution modelling (e.g. Bradie & Leung, 2017; Hanski, 2015; Leroy et al., 2018). Other times they highlight emerging topics, for example in montane research (e.g. Flantua et al., 2019; Perrigo et al., 2020), or new ways of conceptualizing how we tackle longstanding (and new) questions, including functional traits and data sciences (Weigelt et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2019). Looking further forward, publications on emerging technologies and applications will provide new ways of understanding biogeography (e.g. Ariza et al., 2022; Calderón-Sanou et al., 2020; Farquhar et al., 2022), advanced analytical techniques will better infer process from pattern (Dupin et al., 2017) and better knowledge of techniques will yield greater conceptual understanding (Matzke, 2022; Ree & Sanmartín, 2018). Journal of Biogeography has grown in its five decades, by many metrics: this issue is almost as many pages as the entirety of volume 1, we publish 12 issues per year rather than four, the back-catalogue is ~6000 papers and growing, the journal accrues tens-of-thousands of citations per year (over 20,000 in 2021 alone; Web of Science Publication Titles search 06 December 2022), and new and repeat authors publish with us each year. These all speak to the journal's heft and intellectual stature; JBI is the first and the premier journal for biogeography and biogeographers. The journal therefore remains committed to the long-standing goals that have served it well: to be an intellectually broad publication for biogeographers of all flavours (Linder, 2016; Watts, 1974; Whittaker, 2005, 2015). Yet, there is a need and opportunity to redefine how we approach these goals. Biogeography, like other ecological and evolutionary sciences, can tend towards an atlas of case studies (Roughgarden, 2009) when a more synthetic understanding of the world is required. While one might counter that biogeographical rules abound, they often are decades old and so exceptions now abound too. What should a modern holistic discipline of biogeography look like in a time of global change? And how should we reconcile a search for operational and actionable ‘laws’ on such a malleable planet? Through refinements of the journal's scope, guidance to authors and editorial practices, we have increasingly emphasized the need for a deeper, more generalizable and adaptable understanding of biogeography. The journal's scope statement (Supporting Information 1) now prompts authors to situate their work explicitly in the ‘theoretical foundations and the conceptual advances they contribute’, which further guidance suggests including in each abstract's aim and conclusion. We also have encouraged adoption of cutting-edge approaches without excluding consideration of the diversity of methods that can reveal new biogeographical understanding about any place, taxon or time. A creative question, clear hypotheses and robust study design are essential requirements, and if one seeks to reveal effects then comparison and contrast are often required within a study. To better reveal patterns or effects across studies, through meta- or re-analyses, we rigorously apply a requirement for open data. Through these refinements of the long-standing goals, we continue to be a vital contemporary journal serving authors and the discipline. But as the leading journal encompassing biogeography, and considering achievements from the vantage point of our 50th year, we also spy largely uncharted territory and rarely sailed seas. The journal's pages seldom contain any consideration of the bounds of biogeography, nor of its inner workings. For these matters, we would welcome far more consideration of the philosophy and history of biogeographical sciences. The journal's pages also are not representative of the full spatial diversity of important biogeographical questions, nor of the people who might ask them. While there is a single world to measure, and our method is scientific, it is a diverse world and we will know it best by fostering pluralistic perspectives (Miller et al., 2008). Moreover, integrating new techniques with existing knowledge (e.g. Mora-Soto et al., 2021) should both advance the discipline that we know and encourage us to reimagine the ways that we know it. For example, shortfalls (Hortal et al., 2015) and maps of ignorance (Rocchini et al., 2011) are two ways biogeography has been re-imagined. Perhaps biogeography can benefit from a ‘feeling for the organism’ too (Dawson et al., 2021; Keller, 1983) as well as a feeling for the place: we conceive of biogeography as the study of factors determining the distributions and diversity of organisms, but this is a proxy for understanding how, what, when and why—from the perspectives of the organisms, their umwelten (von Uexküll, 1934)—they live where they do. Biogeographical pluralism, while exercising the mind and encouraging multidisciplinarity, is simultaneously a vehicle for rigour, helping tackle the conundrum that falsification can be challenging for biogeographers (Brooks et al., 2001; Craw, 1990; van Veller & Brooks, 2001; see also Popper, 1962), and our discipline susceptible to logical positivism (Brooks et al., 2001; see also Creath, 2022). Innovative perspectives and rigorous syntheses are therefore also much in need. And to be relevant, research must reach a diverse audience: there is not only a social context for science, but in this changing world also an imperative scientific context for society (Lenton & Latour, 2018). To address some of these issues, the journal has for several years been diversifying our board and making explicit our commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (Supporting Information 2). The current Editorial Board is the most diverse in the journal's history reflecting both the dynamic nature of the discipline and its rapidly expanding scope, though there remains much to do. We intend this should become true also for the reviewers and authors with whom we work, and we aim to welcome many new colleagues from outside the historical bounds of biogeography. By being more inclusive and outward looking, we plan that JBI will build on its impressive legacy as a key publication for biogeographers and will continue to attract ground-breaking papers that help define the field. By maintaining a highly respected position in the scientific literature, and emphasizing findings through social and other media, we seek to represent the journal's collective expertise across the breadth of biogeography—its multi-faceted biologic, geographical and coupled nature; its empiricism and rich conceptual foundations—and the changing nature of the discipline to a broader general and scientific public. In the coming year, we have set out to build on JBI's rich legacy, while also imagining the future. We introduce a new logo renewing our commitment to all of biogeography (Figure 3). We will book-end the year with a reflection on Alfred Russel Wallace, who would celebrate his 200th birthday on 08th January 2023, by Ali and Heaney (2022) and a celebration of the 60th anniversary of MacArthur and Wilson (1963) in December via a special issue on functional island biogeography. Also in January we celebrate the contributions of early career biogeographers (Carvalho et al., 2022; Vasconcelos et al., 2021; Windsor et al., 2022; see Dawson et al., 2023), and then throughout the year we will publish Perspectives by senior biogeographers who we asked to look for inspiration in the aforementioned historical ‘top 50’ collections to set the scene for future years. We also solicited contributions on New Techniques and the Future of Biogeography, which will be published throughout the year and provide a small sampling of ongoing developments. To help realize the journal's long-standing commitment to intellectual pluralism, we also mark the journal's 50th anniversary with a new initiative in Global Biogeography, which seeks to better represent the geographical diversity of biogeography. It is self-evident that we cannot understand how the world has changed and will change if our sampling of it is geographically biased, which is currently the case (Supporting Information 2). We begin this initiative with a virtual issue on Global Biogeography, compiling most-cited studies from JBI's back-catalogue that were conducted in countries around the world by biogeographers employed at institutions in those same countries. The virtual issue will be followed by a new special section on Global Biogeography (Supporting Information 3). The special section is explicitly intended to elevate biogeography that historically has been under-represented and is done by researchers with integral local knowledge and addressing general matters. Global Biogeography will be a multi-year initiative, as it begins with commitments at the earliest stages of studies, with inclusion in the teams that design and conduct the research, through all stages from data collection, through analyses and writing, to publication. It is our intention to support all stages of the process to the best extent we can. While predicting the future is fraught by hidden variables and changing circumstances, we can extrapolate biogeographical knowledge to predict some aspects of the world around us over the next five decades. The most basic truism is that humans will continue to exact environmental change: climate change, habitat destruction and fragmentation, over-exploitation, pollution, urbanization and more. Will this be chronic or acute? Will its magnitude be nearer the lower or upper bounds of current estimates? And how will this impact species, their ecologies, evolution, and distributions and frequencies? These are fundamentally biogeographical questions. Biogeographers have excelled at describing distributions and inferring their causes, at reconstructing past distributions and ranges. The challenge, however, is predicting the consequences of anthropogenic change with sufficient precision to circumvent damaging outcomes. While we have predictions about how the distributions of thousands of species may change, we mostly lack validations about how species' distributions have changed in detail in the ways we would expect in the past 50 years (or more). We lack understanding of the mechanisms underlying those changes, and a sound mechanistic understanding about how change occurs based on species' traits. Rigorous comparative frameworks that would reveal shared or different responses of taxa typically are lacking or under-employed (e.g. most phylogeographical analyses are still single-species). The kind of integration needed—beyond geology and genomics, beyond phylogeography and species distribution modelling, to include behaviour, physiology, morphology, species interactions, etc.—will be a radical advance. Making reliable predictions about how to intervene effectively will require local descriptive and experimental work across biogeographical scales coupled with relevant globally applicable theory. Rewilding is perhaps the poster-child for intervention, and for the challenges. Genetic rescue, genomic restoration and biotechnological solutions such as gene drives are all on the cusp of implementation and have major biogeographical requirements and implications. There are many similar existential threats and potential solutions within the purview of biogeography. Underlying all of them must be a sound statistical, and ideally mechanistic, biogeographical understanding of how communities function around the world. JBI welcomes studies tackling the most complete suite of problems across the full extent and many scales of biogeography grounded in empiricism and theory. Running the journal would be impossible and a lot less interesting and enjoyable without the large and talented team of academic editors and Wiley staff; thank you all. Particularly, thank you to the chief editors Crid Fraser, Rosie Gillespie, Holger Kreft, Christine Meynard, Jon Sadler and Damaris Zurell, who have provided invaluable insight into all we have done at the journal over the past 3 years including all the 50th anniversary initiatives. MND also is deeply grateful of Rob Whittaker's and Peter Linder's collegiality and guidance in the art of editing over the years, and for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We thank Genevieve Horne, Emily Davies, Helen Pedersen and Maggie Donnelly for unwavering support at Wiley; Emily Chappell for years of technical assistance; Alex Hartnett, Alice Kallaway, Mirnalini Paramasivam, Subalakshmi Sakthivel, Salman Afroze and Jordan Taylor for their professionalism and dispositions making the editorial office work as smoothly as possible; Hoshia Rose and Carmen Sherry for improving production. Particular thanks to Maggie for bringing the 50th anniversary initiatives to fruition. A big thank you to Albert Lee, CS designer at Wiley, for great patience and help designing the new logo. The authors have no conflicts of interest beyond those that may be perceived by dint of their editorial roles with Journal of Biogeography. All data used to generate figures presented herein are deposited Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p5hqbzkst. Appendix S1. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
Год издания: 2022
Издательство: Wiley
Источник: Journal of Biogeography
Ключевые слова: Species Distribution and Climate Change, Rangeland and Wildlife Management, Botany and Geology in Latin America and Caribbean
Открытый доступ: bronze
Том: 50
Выпуск: 1
Страницы: 1–7