What is Humboldt’s Enigma | Indepth | Drishti IAS

Explorers and naturalists have been asking this question for centuries. Many have also been curious why some areas are more biodiverse than others. One of them was Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) – a polymath who recorded observations on various natural phenomena across the fields known today as geography, geology, meteorology, and biology. Once, when exploring South America, he recorded the distribution of plants on a mountain. He also noted how climates were similar across various mountains in different parts of the world – but where specific features occurred on a mountain varied with elevation. From his various studies, Humboldt suggested there was a relationship between temperature, altitude, and humidity on one hand and the occurrence patterns of species – or their biodiversity – on the other. His example of choice was the Chimborazo Mountain in Ecuador, which has today become an important illustration of mountain diversity. Two centuries later, a group of biogeographers – scientists who explore the relationship of diversity with geography – used modern tools to take another look at the drivers of biodiversity. Based on their findings, they proposed their own version of the link between biodiversity and mountains and called it Humboldt’s enigma. The world’s tropical areas receive more energy from the Sun because of the earth’s angle of inclination. So the tropics have greater primary productivity, which then facilitates greater diversity: more ecological niches become available, creating more complex ecosystems and greater biological diversity. The proponents of Humboldt’s enigma have held that the earth’s tropical areas by themselves don’t contain all the biodiverse regions, that many areas outside the tropics are highly biodiverse. These places are mountains. Indeed, while we expect diversity to decrease away from the tropics, mountains have been an important exception. This is the essence of Humboldt’s enigma. But scientific evidence has been hard to acquire, requiring the use of complex analytical methods and large datasets of various taxonomic groups – and even then remains an incomplete exercise. A simple way to think of Humboldt’s enigma in India is to consider the biodiversity in our tropical areas, south of the Tropic of Cancer passing through Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. These areas are supposed to be the most diverse in the country. The Western Ghats plus Sri Lanka biodiversity hotspot lies in this zone However, the eastern Himalaya are much more diverse. Some scientists have even suggested this part of the mountain range is the second-most diverse area of perching birds in the world. For river birds, the eastern Himalaya may be the most diverse. To understand how this might be possible, let’s turn to the modern understanding of Humboldt’s enigma.
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