Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, and biologist, known for independently conceiving, apart from Darwin, the theory of evolution through natural selection. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line. Island Life has long been considered one of his most important works. In it he studies the influence of the glacial epochs on the distribution patterns of organisms and the characteristics of island biogeography. The book includes historys first theory of continental glaciation based on a combination of geographical and astronomical causes, a discussion of island classification, and a survey of worldwide island faunas and floras. Anticipating our present concern with both endangered species and vanishing environments, Wallace's ecological studies helped substantiate evolution.
