There’s an Invisible Line That Animals Don’t Cross. Here’s Why.

The animal kingdoms of Asia and Australia are worlds aside, because of an invisible line that runs proper between the 2 neighboring continents.

Most flora and fauna by no means go this imaginary boundary, now not even birds.

And so it’s been for tens of thousands and thousands of years, shaping animal evolution in numerous tactics on every facet.

It all began about 30 million years in the past, when the Australian tectonic plate bashed up in opposition to the Eurasian tectonic plate and created an archipelago, rerouting ocean currents and growing new regional climates.

On one facet of the map, in Indonesia and Malaysia, monkeys, apes, elephants, tigers, and rhinos advanced; whilst at the different facet, in New Guinea and Australia, marsupials, monotremes, rodents, and cockatoos flourish. Very few species are ample on either side.

The curious faunal divide is called Wallace’s Line – after the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who first spotted the stark distinction in animal existence (most commonly mammals) whilst exploring the area within the mid-19th century.

“We may consider it established that the Strait of Lombok [between Bali and Lombok] only 15 miles wide [24 kilometers] marks the limit and abruptly separates two of the great zoological regions of the globe,” Wallace wrote.

The naturalist later went directly to independently expand a idea of evolution round the similar time as Charles Darwin. The line he drew on a map greater than a century in the past remains to be regarded as a hypothetical evolutionary barrier, despite the fact that debates proceed as to its actual location and mechanisms.

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Generally speaking, Wallace’s line separates a shelf of the Asian continent from a shelf of the Australian tectonic plate. It is a geological line, but it is also a climatic and biological one.

Deep ocean channels like the Lombok Strait separate each shelf, which makes it difficult for animals to cross. Even when sea levels in the distant past were much lower than today, this chasm would have still existed.

While Wallace’s invisible line is most obvious when comparing mammals in Asia and Australia, it also exists for birds, reptiles, and other animals.

Even creatures with wings don’t typically make the trip across Wallace’s line, and in the ocean, some types of fish and microbes show genetic differences on one side of the border compared to the other, indicating very little mixing between populations.

Scientists have yet to figure out what invisible barriers are holding these species back. Habitat and climate, however, are probably factors accentuating the evolutionary divide.

In 2023, an analysis of more than 20,000 vertebrate species found that Southeast Asian lineages evolved in a relatively tropical ancient environment that allowed them to spread out toward New Guinea on humid island “stepping stones”.

Wildlife on the Australian continental shelf, meanwhile, evolved in distinctly drier conditions, which dictated a different evolutionary path. This meant that Australian wildlife was at a disadvantage in the tropical islands nearer the equator.

The more researchers study the Wallace line, however, the less clear it becomes about where the line should be drawn and how ‘porous’ the barrier might be – at least to some animals that can swim, float, or fly, like bats, beetles, monitor lizards, or macaques.

Wallace’s divide isn’t an absolute border, but more of a gradient, scientists say. Even still, the blurry line helps us make sense of animal evolution for thousands of species.

“Darwin’s and Wallace’s psychological and precise maps have been the desk on which the evolutionary scheme used to be performed out, related in significance to the geological time scale,” argued science historian Jane Camerini in 1993 for the History of Science Society.

What began as a unmarried, kind of positioned line, drawn greater than a century in the past, has now assisted in shaping a larger and extra difficult photo of the wildlife and its mysteries.