Gomphothere's Zoo Design Thread

For those of you who might be interested and can get the channel, one of the inspirations for my Galapagos Exhibit design was a three hour special on the Galapagos Islands that I saw on the NatGeoWild cable channel a little while ago. They are showing the special again tomorrow, May 25, at 9 a.m. EDST. It is a beautiful, thoughtful and thorough introduction to the islands.

 

Am recording it. Sounds good.

~ Thaumatibis

 

WALLACE AND WEGENER MUSEUM
1. The Wallace and Wegener Museum honors two great scientists that are the fathers of biogeography and continental drift/plate tectonics, respectively, concepts that are the heart of the science underlying the zoo’s design concept, hence the location of the museum at the heart of the zoo’s layout.
2. The Museum is a facility of approximately 175,000 square feet/16,250 square meters total, about 155,000 square feet/14,400 square meters of which is public space and 20,000 square feet/1860 square meters of which is staff and collections storage space. In addition, there is approximately 75,000 square feet/7000 square meters of space in the basement, some for staff (including locker rooms and workshops) and the majority for collection storage.
3. The design is basically a set of six large glass-sheathed cuboids arranged in a cross (sort of like a mini-Javits Center) and two smaller ones, all joined by six glass-sheathed walkways. The glass symbolizes the openness of science to facts, and the light it lets in symbolizes the process of intellectual inspiration and enlightenment. The walkways symbolize both the path that scientists take in making their discoveries and the path towards understanding down which they lead us. (The walkways would resemble the one that, at O’Hare Airport, runs from United’s Concourse B at Terminal 1 to the older Terminal 2 next door, which you can see here: Photo Friday: Millennium Chandeliers at Chicago O’Hare Airport - The Traveler's Way.)
4. Entrance: The main entrance, at one of the small cuboids, is set at the corner nearest the zoo’s European exhibits, symbolic of, and in tribute to, the fact that the concepts shown in the museum originated with European scientists. In addition to the entrance counter (a), there will be a coat check (b), public restrooms (c), office and lounge space (d) and restrooms (e) for staff and volunteers, and a gift shop (f) that will lead to the exit.

 

5. From the entrance, you follow the first walkway to the main body of the museum.
6. You start your tour with another of the walkways, this one lined with exhibits introducing Alfred Lothar Wegener, the originator of the theory of continental drift and thus the father of plate tectonics. ([ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener]Alfred Wegener - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] ; http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/wegener.html; Alfred Wegener ;
Alfred Lothar Wegener | biography - German scientist | Britannica.com .) The Wegener Walkway brings you to the north cuboid:
7. The Hall of Plate Tectonics: In design, basically a copy of the main part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York: a large glass-roofed cuboid, three sides of which are also glass, 100 feet/30.5 meters on a side and 90 feet/27 meters high. The centerpiece is a globe seventy feet/21.3 meters in diameter, although instead of representing the Sun as at the Rose Center this globe represents the Earth. (You can see aspects of the design of the Rose Center at these sites: http://cargocollective.com/aasunga/Rose-Center-for-Earth-Space-A-Study; ennead architects American Museum of Natural History, Rose Center for Earth and Space, Hayden Planetarium - Auerbach Consultants .)
8. You take an elevator up to the fourth floor, where visitors gather on a balcony ramp that winds its way around the cube with exhibits of fossils and geological samples such as those on which Wegener relied to advance his theory of continental drift. (Links to the five lines of geologic evidence are here: https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap1-Pioneers-of-Plate-Tectonics/Alfred-Wegener.)
9. The ramp gradually leads the visitor group one level down, where you enter a theater encased in the globe (in the same position as the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center, but set up more like a standard theater rather than using a domed screen an star projector). There, a video presentation introduces you to plate tectonics and the earth’s geologic history. (Much like the National Geographic video you can see here: A history of supercontinents on planet Earth.)
10. You exit the theater via a spiral ramp taking you down around the outside of the globe. On the surface of that globe the last 3.3 billion years and the next 250 million years of the Earth’s surface geology are displayed every hour, the supercontinents forming and breaking up before your eyes. (You can see from 3.3 bya to the present here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwWWuttntio. One prediction for the next 250 million years can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38DMH3zP97U .) Each second of an hour is equal to just about one million years, so the modern configuration is reached at 250 seconds, or four minutes and ten seconds, before the hour.
11. As you walk down the ramp, the broad handrail is actually a continuous sign guiding you on a journey through time. Mounted on the handrail at intervals are small globes that provide snap shots of how the continents appeared at key moment in geologic history, much like those shown here: Formation and History of Continents (earliest continental formations) and here: Mollewide Plate Tectonic Maps of Phanerozoic (Mollweide projections); High Resolution Globes (globes).
12. Down towards the base of the globe, you enter another, smaller theater using the “Science on a Sphere” technology (What is Science On a Sphere). On that sphere will be a much speeded up version of what can be seen outside on the larger globe, but with a narration, which will conclude with extra time being taken to examine what the future of the planet may look like, as you can see here (scroll to 2:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGcDed4xVD4.
13. After you leave the second theater, you descend to the main floor where there are exhibits, including more geologic samples, further evidencing and explaining plate tectonics, including its relationship with earthquakes and volcanoes, and an exhibit showing how GPS is currently used to track the movement of the plates.
14. A glass sheathed walkway leads you out of the Hall of Plate Tectonics towards the Hall of Climate History, introducing it with exhibits presenting the changes in climate that the Earth has experienced in the last roughly century and a half. Just before you enter the Hall of Climate History, the question is posed: “Is this change a natural part of the Earth’s life, or something else? Learn the history of Earth’s climate and judge for yourself!”
15. Just before the Climate Change Walkway takes you into the Hall of Climate History, there is a side walkway into the Hall of Special Exhibitions.
16. The Hall of Special Exhibitions will display a rotating series of special exhibitions, some produced the W&W Museum and others borrowed from other museums. The core of these will be a series of in-depth looks at each of the major geologic eras/epoch/periods, e.g., the first will focus on the Cambrian. In the center room (a), Science on a Sphere technology will display the Earth as it was during the Cambrian Period, explaining the geography and climate, and how those were impacting the evolution of life (almost of which was still in the seas), i.e., what scientists have theorized about the reasons for the Cambrian Explosion. In essence, it will be as if we had sent a time traveling team back to that time and they have returned and are presenting their report on what they found (or if we found the records of an alien civilization that had visited Earth at that time and made a report on their findings). The outer room (b) will feature fossils from the Cambrian Period. Gradually, over a period of about two years, the special exhibitions will work their way through the geologic history from the Cambrian to the present, showing how the changes in the continents changed the climate and the two combined to shape evolution eventually to produce the flora and fauna of today.

 

17. After leaving the Hall of Special Exhibitions, you return to the Climate Change Walkway, which takes you into:
18. The Hall of Climate History: The design is basically the same as that of the Hall of Plate Tectonics. The center is again a giant globe representing the Earth.
19. You take an elevator to an upper level that slowly ramps down, lined with exhibits showing how and what we know about how the atmosphere developed and evolved and how we have been able to discern the planet’s climate history.
20. Down one level, you enter an encased theater in which you are introduced to how science can discover the history of the planet’s climate. (Much like the video you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfjkeE-ABGI but longer, or here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytGgFXqJOI8 but less academic.)
21. When you exit, you look up at the globe, and you can watch the last 2.5 billion years of Earth’s history, but this time you can see the glaciers, forests, deserts and grasslands form and spread and retreat as the continents move around the globe and the climate changes.
22. You head down a spiral ramp, and on this one the smaller globes mounted on the bannister provide snapshots of how various climates were distributed around the globe at key moments in Earth history (like you can see here: Climate History), including explanations about how the continents’ locations and effect on ocean currents and wind patterns influenced the climate and what vegetation distribution was likely the result of the climate at the time, illustrated by fossils of plants from each era/epoch/period.
23. At a lower level, there is another smaller theater, also using the Science on a Sphere technology, which will provide an illustration and discussion about how the present day climate works.
24. The exhibits around the base of the central globe include exhibits about the various known climate cycles and what we know about the pace of climate change, including the several most rapid known climate changes in earth history. (The contrast between their time scale and that of present climate change will be patent, indeed, should be terrifying since it will be very apparent that the planet has never before experienced change on this scale at this pace.)
25. The use of globes in the first three halls is purposeful since many of the projections used in schools to show geography seriously distort the relative size of the continents, leading people to greatly overestimate the size of the northern continents as a result, and it is hoped this will help produce a more accurate perspective.
26. You leave the Hall of Climate History via another glass sheathed walkway introducing you to the giants of genetics, from Gregor Mendel to Watson and Crick and a short list of the most important ones in between. (You can meet them here: NOVA | Before Watson and Crick.)
27. The Genetics Walkway takes you to the Hall of Evolution, where, as in the others, you start by taking an elevator up to the fourth floor.
28. On the fourth floor, the Genetics of Evolution, you briefly meet (or, if you’ve already been to the Galápagos Building, are reintroduced to) Charles Darwin. From there, you learn what prompted him to develop the theory of evolution, including the work of others on which he built. You then begin your tour of the specifics of how evolution works, on this floor learning how genes control anatomy, physiology and behavior, including “master” genes; what we know about epigenetics; and the different ways variation arises in a population (mutation, recombination, and reassortment).
29. Down a floor, at the Mechanics of Evolution, you learn about the factors that result in natural selection by acting on variation in heritable traits to affect reproductive success, including: terrain and climate (i.e. building directly on the two previous halls) and their effect on the environment (more specifically, the extent to which the available habitat provides water, food, shelter, breeding sites, and suitable temperatures); predation; parasitism; disease; sexual preference; etc., and the resulting competition and adaptation. You also examine other factors that influence the course and pace of evolution such as mutation bias, linkage, genetic drift, gene flow in a population, selective sweeps, co-evolution, horizontal gene transfer, and extinction events; and how all this results in in speciation, including both anagenesis and cladogenesis. Finally, you learn what genetics and mathematics tell us about the speed of evolution, including an exhibit on the controversy between gradualism and punctuated equilibrium and a frank acknowledgement of the sometimes lack of fit between genetic clocks and the fossil record.
30. Down one more floor, the Evidence of Evolution, the exhibits on this floor regale you with the concrete evidence of evolution: the many examples of transitional fossils and the recent field discoveries (8 Examples of Evolution in Action - Listverse ; 7 Animals That Are Evolving Right Before Our Eyes | Cracked.com ; Top 10 Recent Signs Evolution is Real - Toptenz.net ) and lab research (the work of Professor Richard Lenski at Michigan State University) showing evolution happening before our very eyes at a pace that we can measure on a time scale even non-geologist humans can grasp. In addition, there are a series of cages and aquaria showing living examples of parallel and convergent evolution, such as: Flying Squirrels and Sugar Gliders; Planigales and Shrews; Moles and Marsupial Moles; Jerboas, Kangaroo Rats and Kultarrs; Mice and Mulgaras; Hummingbirds, Honeyeaters and Sunbirds; Largemouth Bass (a sunfish) and Peacock Bass (a cichlid); Mantises and a Mantispids; Pill Bugs and Pill Millipedes; and some of the African Cichlids where populations in lakes isolated from each other have radiated and produced nearly identical assortment of species.
31. Finally on the ground floor, Evolution vs. Anti-Evolution, we embrace controversy, directly confronting young earth creationism, religious scriptural literalism, intelligent design, and other points of view in opposition to evolution, raising and responding to the classic set of anti-evolutionist arguments. One exhibit will show the latest worldwide poll comparing acceptance of evolution with other viewpoints, by nation. The exhibits will even dare to wade into the thickets of theology, beginning with the Scopes and Dover trial and then proceeding to point out that Jews, to whom Genesis belongs, for the most part do not teach or believe in its literal interpretation and accept evolution, that the vast majority of Christians, including Catholics, Orthodox Christians and the Anglican Communion and a fair number of Protestants, including both mainline (e.g., Methodists) and evangelical (e.g., Church of the Nazarene) sects, belong to churches that accept evolution and teach that Genesis is not a science textbook, that Christian Biblical inerrancy/literalism is a movement essentially only a little over a century old and largely confined to certain American Protestant sects, and that large majorities of Hindus and Buddhists (the second and third largest world religions) accept evolution, in other words, that young earth creationism and a denial of common descent is a distinctly minority position in the modern world, not at all necessarily a part of being a believing Christian, and centered in fundamentalist Protestantism and Islam. The unabashed message here is that the two great magisteria, to use the words of Stephen Gould, are not inherently in conflict. (Berkeley has a web page that covers much of the same ground this floor will: Understanding Evolution.)

 

32. You exit the Hall of Evolution via another glassed in walkway which introduces you to Alfred Russel Wallace, the father of biogeography and arguably a co-developer of the theory of evolution. (http://wallacefund.info/; [ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Russel_Wallace;[/ame]
http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/index1.htm; Alfred Russel Wallace | biography - British naturalist | Britannica.com Alfred Russel Wallace. )
33. The Wallace Walkway brings you to the Hall of Biogeography, providing something of an integration of all that you’ve already toured and where you begin one floor up. Two floors of exhibits:
a. trace the history of the science’s development and how it relates to earth history, including paleontology and introduce the distinctions among the several types of biogeography: historical/paleo-; ecological; conservation; systematic; and evolutionary biogeography;
b. explore the key concepts of Biogeography such as dispersal, migration, endemism, range and distribution, vicariance (splitting of a population by a geographic or biotic barrier), and island biogeography (both in water bodies and sky islands)(for each concept pointing to animals exhibited at the zoo as illustrations);
c. show the history of dividing the earth into biogeographical divisions, beginning with Wallace’s six regions (including “Wallace’s Line”) and working towards the current system of ecozones-bioregions-ecoregions (terrestrial) and realms-provinces-ecoregions (marine) that are the basis for the Zoo’s own organization and design; and
d. illustrate the impact of humans.
34. From the Hall of Biogeography, you move into the center of the museum, the Hall of the Tree of Life (slightly larger than the others, 110 feet/33.5 meters on a side), which houses an enormous three dimensional representation of all the lines of living organisms of all time, much like you can see here but made tangible, filling the hall: https://visual.ly/great-tree-life. Imagine that tree of life, essentially an enormous flattened bush, fan shaped, with the stem at one end, rooted in the floor, each branch rising straight up into the hall, forming a large open circle of these vertical branches. Around the outer part of the hall are exhibits on alternative representations of the tree of life and the great extinction events of geologic history – what we know of their cause and of their effect on the diversity of life.
35. Once you have viewed the surrounding exhibits, a walkway of staircases and landings, wrapped around the tree and supported by scaffolding, takes you along, around and up the outside of the tree. An elevator and another set of walkways make the interior available to those who cannot walk up. Moving up along the walkways is the equivalent of traveling through time from the origins of life towards the present (although the scale is not linear).
36. You start at the base of the walkway, where the Tree of Life emerges from the floor, symbolizing the origins of life at about 3.5 billion years ago. From here, branches for bacteria and archaea spread out and rise towards the roof. You begin climbing the stairs, and after you have ascended ten feet (a), you are at two billion years ago, the first eukaryotes have appear, and the branches for single-cell organisms rise up from your feet. Five more feet up (b), and you are at one billion years ago; multicellular organisms have appeared and proliferated, and the branches for plants and fungi rise up and begin to branch and spread. At twenty feet above the floor (c), you are at about 700 million years ago, and the branches for sponges, placozoans, ctenophores, corals and acoel flatworms are in front of you. Between twenty and twenty-five feet up (d), the first animals appear and then you are at the Cambrian Explosion, 540 million years ago, bilateral animals proliferate, and you see the stalks and branches for the protostome invertebrates begin to spread. As you ascend these five feet, you see the first deuterostomes, both the invertebrate branch (echinoderms) and the first chordates, which soon give rise to fish, but at thirty feet above the floor (e) you reach the Ordovician-Silurian mass extinction events, at 445-447 million years ago (the second worst of all time), and you can look back and see many of the branches behind you simply end. Five more feet up (f), and a branch from the lobe-finnned fishes has become the first amphibians, about 370 million years ago, but the late Devonian mass extinction event has cut off others of the existing branches behind you. When you have reached forty feet up (g), at 250 million years ago, the branches for the first reptiles have appeared, but the worst mass extinction event of all time, the Permian-Triassic, trims off a great many branches and the diversity of life, i.e., the number of continuing branches, shrinks drastically. You look back at the branches whose lower reaches you have passed, and you can see around you the holes the extinction event has left in the tree. You climb another five feet (h), you are at 200 million years ago, and you can see a therapsid reptile branch becoming mammals, but the end Triassic extinction event does some modest trimming, to pave the way for the rise of the dinosaurs, whose branches you can see spreading behind you. But in another five feet (i), at fifty feet up, you have reached 65 million years ago, and all those branches end abruptly, except for one that continues up and radiates. At the top of its many branches sit today’s dinosaur descendants, the birds, while the mammal branches are proliferating as well, which you watch as you climb the next ten feet. When you reach the top of the ramp, sixty feet up (j), there are branches on the top of which stand apes and a human being. Sixty-five feet from the floor represents the present moment, and as you pass the last of the branches, an exhibit asks: “How many of the branches behind will never grow any higher?”
37. From there, you cross a bridge back into the fourth floor of the Hall of Biogeography, the top two floors of which are exhibits tracing the evolution of the primates.
38. In the Hall or Primate Evolution, you start by learning how the Permian-Triassic extinction event nearly wiped out the therapsid reptiles, and how the climate at the time and the rise of the dinosaurs exerted a selective pressure on the surviving therapsids that led to the evolution of mammals, including a look at the evolution of their defining characteristics such as differentiated teeth, more efficient locomotion, homeothermic metabolism, fur, enhanced smell and hearing and their influence on increasing relative brain size, increased care of the young, milk production, and eventually live birth along with the marsupial pouch and the placenta, but also the loss of color vision. The next step shown will be the end-Cretaceous extinction event, and how first the demise of the dinosaurs and then the return of plant life opened up the scansorial and later arboreal insectivore niches, how this led to a more omnivorous diet and adaptations such as nails, binocular vision and opposable first digits, and thus the appearance of the prosimians. (At this location, there will be a cage containing live tree shrews.) By this time, the rise of the forests had resulted in the development of fruits, and some primates found advantage by specializing in fruit eating and eventually re-evolved some of the color vision that their nocturnal ancestors had lost. The need to use color vision to discern ripe fruit required a diurnal lifestyle, living in social groups was advantageous in coping with the increased exposure to predation, and social living provided selective advantage to increased brain size as well. Thus arose monkeys, who largely displaced the then existing prosimians, relegating them to nocturnal and geographically isolated niches. An exhibit will address the split between the Old World and New World monkeys. As the climate became cooler and drier, resulting in time and space gaps in the availability of ripe fruit, most monkeys adapted by broadening their diet to include unripe fruit and certain leaves, as evidenced by a change in their teeth apparent in the fossil record (and a change in their digestive system which can be seen today). But, in the Old World, one group persisted with a focus on ripe fruit and kept the ancestral monkey tooth pattern; they instead evolved brachiation so that they could move more efficiently through trees (eliminating the need for a tail) and enhanced brain function to be able to remember when and where fruit would be available and to navigate between those opportunities, evidence of both of which can be seen in the fossil record. From here, the exhibits will trace the evolution of all the extant apes (except one): gibbons; siamangs; orang-u-tans; gorillas; bonobos; and chimpanzees. The final exhibit will show you where in the zoo you can see today’s living primates and be an invitation to learn of the evolution of the remaining ape at the Museum of Human Evolution in the Afrotropic Zone.
39. Stairs or elevators will take you back down to the ground floor, where you will exit through the gift shop.

 

40. If you have business at the museum, you will be taken to the fifth floor where, on top of the Halls of Evolution and of Primate Evolution are the staff offices. Although the elevator button says “5”, because of the height of the halls below them, the offices are at the equivalent of the ninth floor. The offices have skylit ceilings throughout and most also have glass outer walls with floor to ceiling views out over the zoo from its center (a few have glass walls looking out over the Tree of Life), and are the envy of many others on the zoo staff.
41. The elevators from the Hall of Biogeography bring you up to a large reception and library area (a), where either of two administrative assistants greets you. From this area, you easily reach a series of curatorial offices, including a corner office for the museum’s General Curator (b) and offices for the museum’s assistant curators (c), namely those for Earth Sciences, Climatology and Paleoclimatology, Evolutionary Biology, Biogeography, Primate Evolution, Paleontology and Paleobotany. There are also a row of smaller offices for support staff (d): the museum’s heads of Visitor Services; Facilities and Maintenance; Security; Administration/Human Resources; and I.T. In on office that looks out over both the zoo and the Tree of Life is the museum’s development representative (e). In the center of the floor is a large area for current collections access and work (f), although the main collections storage area is in the basement. There are staff restrooms (g), maintenance and electrical closets (h), and an IT equipment room (i).
42. A balcony walkway overlooking the Tree of Life leads you around the corner to the rest of the staff offices.
43. The other half of the museum office space holds a conference room (a), offices for those who oversee video exhibits and collections management (b), staff restrooms (c), a maintenance closet (d), staff kitchen and lounge (e), bullpen areas for research and curatorial assistants (f) and exhibit design staff (g), and exhibit construction and repair workshop space (h)(with additional space in the basement). Also on this floor are offices for the Curator of the Museum Exhibits (i) that are out in the zoo as part of the animal exhibits and three assistant curators for these exhibits (New World, Old World, and Polar and Aquatic (j). This staff, of course, works closely with the museum’s own assistant curators, especially with respect to those showing evolution of animal groups, extinct species, aspects of climate or geology, and the impact of climate change on the animal species on display throughout the zoo.
44. Longer films on many of the museum’s topics will be available at the Documentary Multiplex, which is part of the Zooniversity, like those you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCSJNBMOjJs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZdhPnsp4Is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TMlz85Q_7o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYBRbCLI4zU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HZzGXnYL5I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5GFo9PBo1I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QZ9md-eSKI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPEmo0bSRiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7s_6_3safI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSzF3_HPv68
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeJmwGHOibE

 

Wow. I'm sure that anti creationism museum will be popular!

~ Thaumatibis

 

A few questions...
What do you think abouth the Palearctic-Afrotropic boundary? Sahel? Middle of the Sahara? Mediterranean Sea?
What do you think about Wallecea-asian or australian? I refer specifically to sulawesi, which has lots of asian wildlife.
The everglades are neotropical; you put them in the nearctic.
I've noticed these are inconsistent, so I wanted to know.

~ Thaumatibis

 

Hoping so! ;-)

 

Now you're going to make me work! I've looked at eight different systems, and you've certainly hit on three areas where there is lack of consistency (Wallace 1876, Udvardy 1975, Smith 1983, Cox 2001, Kreft & Jetz 2010, Proches & Ramdhani 2012, Holt et al. 2013, and the WWF system). When I started this, I hadn't really settled on which one to use. I am leaning more and more towards using the WWF system largely because it has the most detail most readily available on the internet. This would put the Everglades in the Neotropical, although some systems do not. (The flora is heavily Neotropical, while the native vertebrate fauna except for wading birds is much more Nearctic, and the invertebrate fauna seems mixed.) The WWF system divides Afrotropical from Palearctic at the Sahel, which seems as good a place as any. That issue is so difficult that some systems make a separate region or subregion of the Sahara and Arabian area, plus some of the Mediterrenean and even all the way over to Iran and Pakistan. As for Sulawesi, WWF puts it in Autralasia, as do most systems, but it always has to have sort of an asterisk. Nature is complex, and complexity makes for some messiness in the zoogeography department.

 

Zoogeography is more centered on flora than fauna, don't you think?

~ Thaumatibis

 

You're not the only one with a zoogeographic zoo... check out Toronto. They got a few wrong facts, though.
"The Zoo is divided into seven zoogeographic regions: Indo-Malaya, Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Eurasia, Canadian Domain and the Tundra Trek."
Canada isn't in the Americas?

~ Thaumatibis

 

Zoogeography by definition would be centered on fauna not flora. Biogeography would take both into account.

 

Nice to see that the U.S. isn't the only nation that thinks it deserves to stand alone, LOL.

 

So what would people like most to see next? Here are what I'm considering: (1) the North American Tundra; (2) the Everglades; (3) the Argentinean pampas; or take on the daunting task of starting to work my way through the ecoregions of either (4) Australia; (5) Madagascar; or (6) New Guinea.

 

Australia.

 

Pampas. See jbnbsn99's south america exhibit; he does a good job of seperating the scrub biomes.

~ Thaumatibis

 

The Canadian Domain in Toronto was built after the rest of the zoo and since there was not space, it isn't close to the Americas section.

Anyways, I haven't posted in this thread for a while, but I love absolutely everything about this zoo. The amount of detail in all of the descriptions make me feel like I'm actually there. I also think the idea of the Wallace and Wegener Museum is brilliant and I wish more zoos did things like that. As for what you should do next, I'm also interested in seeing a Pampas area, but do whatever you would like to do the most.

 

Either Tundra of Madagascar, both appeal greatly to me