"Only religious zealots consider Darwin's Theory to be *infamous'. Others consider it to be well-thought scientific theory based on physical evidence and not hearsay."

That's the comment posted on The Jakarta Post website by an assiduous reader, justifiably troubled my erroneous use of word "infamous" in describing Charles Darwin's work on evolution in my previous GreenWatch article about Sulawesi's Pygmy tarsiers (Jan. 27, 2009).

Apologies for my unfortunate semantic error. As an avid environmentalist, I am a strong admirer of the great naturalist whose work is currently receiving much attention, this being the 200th year since Darwin's birth and 150 years since the publication of his most famous work, On the Origin of Species.

Interestingly, Indonesia plays a pivotal role in the story of the study of evolution. It is also exactly 150 years since his friendly rival and fellow biologist, Alfred Russel Wallace, first publicized his discovery of the near-magical boundary that divides Indonesia's western islands to the west of Sumatra, Borneo, Java and Bali with those to the east including Lombok, Sulawesi and Timor.

During the mid-1800s, while Darwin was exploring the Galapagos islands of South America, Wallace was studying the rich biodiversity on the Moluccan "Spice Islands" that comprise a part of the archipelago of Indonesia.

Attracted by the abundant variety of species, Wallace noticed during his extensive travels in the area that the islands in the western part of the archipelago had animal life similar to that found in continental Asia, while the islands in the eastern part of the chain had species resembling those found in Australia.

The so-called father of animal geography was particularly impressed by the sudden difference in bird families he encountered when he sailed some 20 miles east of the island of Bali and landed on Lombok. On Bali, the birds were clearly related to those of the larger islands of Java and Sumatra and mainland Malaysia, while the birds on Lombok were related to New Guinean and Australian communities.

He marked the channel between Bali and Lombok as the divide between two great "zoogeographic" regions, the Oriental and Australian. This became known as The Wallace Line.

At the risk of getting too scientific, there were actually two "Wallace Lines". Wallace originally placed his boundary to the northwest of Sulawesi, but later relocated it to the southeast of this island.

In fact, without knowing it, Wallace had moved his line to a new position that accurately matches the plate tectonic history of the archipelago. The Australia and Eurasia plates collided 15 million years ago, bringing into contact two communities that had been isolated from one another since the close of the Cretaceous that occurred some 65 million years past.

During the Ice Age, Sulawesi was in contact with the Eurasian mainland, while a deep ocean trench separated Sulawesi from islands immediately to the southwest that were connected to Australia and New Guinea. After Wallace, researchers drew a number of other "lines" in this area, depending on which animal group they studied.

Wallace mainly studied birds for this purpose, but the dividing "line" shifts across the archipelago depending upon whether the subject studied was birds, mammals or freshwater fish.

Wallace's idea has had a profound effect on all biological thinking to the present day. Australian environmentalist and author Penny van Oosterzee has written a remarkable book called Where Worlds Collide that follows Wallace's journeys through the islands of Southeast Asia, explaining his theory and how it has been interpreted by biologists since.

Arguably, Wallace was the true originator of the idea for which Charles Darwin was to become famous. The two were at least working on the same general problem at the same time although in different parts of the world, and Wallace's discoveries prompted Darwin to publish his own findings sooner than he had intended. Indeed, Darwin gave due credit to Wallace, including a mention in the second paragraph of On the Origin of Species.

In this column, I have often cited the importance of Indonesia to the world's ecosystems. The nation is home to an extraordinary abundance of flora and fauna. It has always represented a vital environmental crossroad for the world.

Alfred Wallace's adventures in these islands serves to highlight the importance of conservation to Indonesia. There are all-too-many endangered species in this country. Surely we must do everything possible to protect the flora and fauna that gave the likes of Wallace such vital insights into the very origins of life.

Jonathan Wootliff is an independent sustainable development consultant specializing in the building of productive relationships between companies and NGOs. He can be contacted at jonathan@wootliff.com

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