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faunal region
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Map of the Indonesian archipelago showing major faunal boundaries with colored lines: Wallace's Line in blue, Huxley's modification in red, Weber's Line in purple, and Lydekker's Line in green. These lines mark biogeographic divisions between Asian and Australasian animal species across islands such as Borneo, Sulawesi, Halmahera, and New Guinea. World map displaying faunal realms and major animal regions, with color-coded areas representing the Holarctic, Paleotropical (Afro-Tethyan), Neogaean (Neotropical), Notogaean (Australian), and Oceanic realms. Major boundaries and notable regions such as Afrotropical, Oriental, Madagascan, Wallacea, Australian, and Hawaiian are labeled, and arrows indicate the hypothesized distribution of Antarctic fauna. World map showing major faunal regions as defined by mammalian distributions, with each region color-coded: Holarctic in green (including Nearctic and Palearctic), Afro-Tethyan in pink (including Mediterranean, Ethiopian, Oriental, and Madagascan), Latin American in tan (including Neotropical, Argentine, and West Indian), Island in yellow (including Australian and Madagascar). Major region boundaries are marked with bold lines.
Quick Facts
Also called:
Zoogeographic Region
Key People:
Karl P. Schmidt
Loren Eiseley
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faunal region

biogeography
Also known as: zoogeographic region
Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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History

faunal region, any of six or seven areas of the world defined by animal geographers on the basis of their distinctive animal life. These regions differ only slightly from the floristic regions (q.v.) of botanists.

Each region more or less coincides with a major continental land mass, separated from other regions by oceans, mountain ranges, or deserts. They are: Palaearctic, Ethiopian (Africa south of the Sahara), Oriental, Australian, Nearctic, Neotropical, and Antarctic. The Palaearctic (roughly, Europe, northern Africa, and northern Asia) and the Nearctic (North America and Greenland) are often combined as the Holarctic region inasmuch as considerable interchange of fauna has occurred between them via the land bridge that formerly existed between Siberia and Alaska.

Some zoogeographers consider the Neotropical (South America and Central America to central Mexico), the Australian, and the Antarctic regions as so different from the others that they elevate them to higher units called realms, equal to the remaining regions combined. Such a scheme presents the following realms: Neogea (Neotropical); Notogea (Australian); Metagea (Holarctic, Oriental, and Ethiopian); and Antarctica.

World map using color coding to show the distribution of major floral kingdoms, subkingdoms, and regions. Key floral kingdoms include Boreal (green), Neotropical (pink), Paleotropical (yellow), South African or Capensic (purple), Australian (orange), and Antarctic (blue). Boundaries for subkingdoms, regions, and divisions are marked with different colored lines, and major regions such as Indoafrican, North American, and Malesian are labeled across continents.
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biogeographic region: Fauna