Native American Biological Diversity and the Biogeographic Influence of Ice Age Refugia

Abstract

The Wisconsin glaciation divided North America into a number of ice-free refugia for flora and fauna. Pat- terns of variation of certain North American mammalian species have been interpreted as a product of biological dif- ferentiation arising from isolation in these refugia. Recent- ly, a tripartite biological and linguistic division of human populations in North America has been proposed by a number of researchers. The tripartite division in biological and linguistic traits correlates with three ice-free refugia that existed during the Wisconsin. These refugia would have provided the necessary isolation for the development of biologically and linguistically divergent groups. The human data can be seen as part of a broader pattern of glacial influences on biological variation among North American mammals.