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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2017
Biogeography is concerned with recording and explaining the distribution of organisms in space and time. In their search for patterns of distribution, biogeographers have classified the surface of the earth into a hierarchical scheme of ecological units (e.g. Kauffman and Scott, 1976). The basic biogeographic units are realms and provinces. A faunal realm is a large area about the size of a continent while provinces are subdivisions within a realm. An appreciation of the scale involved is gained by considering a current classification of the terrestial world (Udvardy, 1975) which contains 8 realms and 172 provinces.