Portal:Indonesia/BOTW/5, 2007



Alfred Russel Wallace, OM, FRS (January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist. He did extensive field work in the Malay Archipelago, where he proposed the Wallace line dividing the fauna of Australia from that of Asia.

He is best known for independently proposing a theory of natural selection which prompted Charles Darwin to publish his own more developed and researched theory sooner than he had intended. However, he was also one of the leading evolutionary thinkers of the 19th century who made a number of other contributions to the development of evolutionary theory, including the concept of warning coloration in animals. Wallace was also considered the 19th century’s leading expert on the geographical distribution of animal species and is sometimes called the "father of biogeography".

From 1854 to 1862, he travelled through the Malay Archipelago or East Indies (now Malaysia and Indonesia), to collect specimens for sale and to study nature. His observations of the marked zoological differences across a narrow zone in the archipelago led to his hypothesis of the zoogeographical boundary now known as the Wallace line. One of his better known species descriptions during this trip is the gliding tree frog Rhacophorus nigropalmatus, Wallace's flying frogs. His studies there were eventually published in 1869 as The Malay Archipelago. (Read more...)