An ecozone is the broadest biogeographic division of the Earth’s land surface, based on distributional patterns of terrestrial organisms.
Ecozone delineate areas of the Earth’s surface within which organism have been evolving in relative isolation over long periods of time, separated from one another by geographic features, such as oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, that constitute barriers to migration.
An ecozone may include a number of different biomes. Yet similar biomes in different ecozones may be inhabited by plants and animals with very different evolutionary histories.
A bioregion is a geographic clusters of ecoregions that may span several habitat types, but have strong biogeographic affinities, particularly at taxonomic levels higher than the species level.
WWF scheme divides the Earth’s land surface into 8 ecozones, and further subdivides ecozones into bioregions :
Afrotropic | Sahel & Sudan |
Southern Arabian Woodlands | |
Forest Zone | |
East Africa Grassland & Savannas | |
East Africa's Highlands | |
Southern African Woodland, Savannas & Grasslands | |
Dessert of Sourthern Africa | |
Cape Floristic Region | |
Madagascar & Indian Ocean Islands | |
Antarctic | Antartica |
Australasia | Wallacea |
New Guinea & Melanesia | |
Indomalaya | India subcontinent |
Indochina | |
Sunda Shelf & Philippines | |
Nearctic | Canadian Shield |
Eastern North America | |
Northern Mexico | |
Western North America | |
Neotropical | Amazonia |
Carribean | |
Central America | |
Central Andes | |
Eastern South America | |
Northern Andes | |
Orinoco | |
Southern South America | |
Oceania | Oceania |
Palearctic | Euro-Siberian Region |
Mediterranean Basin | |
Sahara & Arabian Desserts | |
Western & Central Asia | |
East Asia | |
Freshwater |
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