The Wallace Line is an imaginary transitional zone between Asia and Australia that acts a barrier for many species.
It represents an abrupt limit of distribution for many major animal groups.
Many fish, bird, and mammal groups are abundant on one side of the Wallace Line and largely absent on the other side. But why is this the case?
In a world where lines define generally the boundaries of countries and regions, one invisible line stands out for its profound impact on the natural world.
The Wallace Line is a transitional zone between Asia and Australia that includes what is known as the Malay Archipelago and the Indo-Australian Archipelago.
This line was first drawn by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently came up with the theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin, although it was English biologist and anthropologist T.H. Huxley who gave the line its name.
The Wallace Line, or Wallace’s Line, runs in the water through Indonesia, separating Asiatic fauna on the West from the mixture of Asiatic and Australian fauna on the East. This has led to it being dubbed “the line that most animals don’t cross.”
