AUSTRALIA (de Candolle 1820)

De Candolle (1820), while referring to the continent of Australia, used the term “La Nouvelle-Hollande”, and we attribute this Sub-realm to him, translated herein as Australia. Doing (1970) classified the ‘Australian Kingdom’ based on floral regions and vegetation, which was divided into the Central Australian and the Eucalyptus sub-kingdoms. More broadly, Good (1964) placed Australia within Australasia.

Whereas the phytogeographical regions have a single origin (Tate 1889), the majority of sub-regions are derived from the vertebrate endemic areas of Cracraft (1991). The latter were mostly adopted by Crisp et al. (1995, 1999), with novel subdivision of the southeast of Australia, and inclusion of New Guinea. Only a few of these have been altered from their original diagnoses. Cracraft’s sub-regions are discussed in detail in the zoogeographical section.