Alfred Russel Wallace – Opwall’s Namesake!

Alfred Russel Wallace is a man you may not have ever heard of before – but you should’ve done! He is Operation Wallacea’s namesake, and we feel we should spread the word of his achievements so you can go on to tell everyone about the two people who came up with the theory of natural selection!

Wallace was born in 1823 and after leaving school aged 14 he developed an interest in natural history. He became friends with entomologist Henry Walter Bates and got into collecting specimens. They were both inspired from reading works by eminent scientists such as Humboldt and Darwin, however Wallace and Bates were virtually unknown and had very little financial backing. The pair decided to travel to Brazil in 1848 to expand their knowledge, planning to make money through specimen collecting, as this was a lucrative trade in England at the time.

Photo by Guille Armero

Wallace explored north of the Amazon River and collected thousands of specimens including birds, butterflies and beetles. However, on the trip home 4 years later, the boat caught fire and all of the specimens were lost! He was rescued along with a small collection of his field notes, and from these he was able to publish a few articles once home. The Royal Geographical Society were impressed with his work and helped to fund his next trip, which was to the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia in 1854. This area is now Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

He spent 8 years in this region, collecting data as well as specimens and writing up scientific articles. He collected a total of ~126,000 specimens, including 110,000 insects. Of his collections, more than 5000 were new to science.

While writing his papers on the natural history of the Malay Archipelago, he often acknowledged the contributions and support from his local guide Ali, a Malay teenager. This was unusual for the time period, where many overlooked the contributions of indigenous peoples.

Wallace noticed a difference in species and their distribution across the Malay archipelago, and proposed an imaginary line which divided the region in two based on species similarity. For example, placental mammals are found north of the line, which marsupials are found south of it. This became known as the Wallace Line and it later was found to match closely to the junction of tectonic plates, meaning that species on either side of the line had evolved completely separately of each other and the two regions had moved closer together since!

Photo by Dr Nancy Priston

One article he published in 1855 started delving into the topic of where new species come from, with the concluding line stating, “every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species”. This was followed by subsequent papers outlining his ideas that species outlive their “parent” species in a fight for existence. During one period when he was struggling with malaria, he had a eureka moment where he theorised that evolution was driven by natural selection.

He knew from reading Darwin’s work that he was interested in evolution, and so he wrote a letter to him detailing his ideas on natural selection. When Darwin received this he had been working on his theory of natural selection for a number of years, but had never finished or published it. The letter from Wallace spurred him on, and he published both his own writings and Wallace’s paper in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society in 1858 in one article titled, “On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection”.

Photo by Dave Bird

While this is credited as being the first publication on the topic, Darwin then published his book “On the origin of species” which was far more widely-read. From this point onwards it was always Darwin’s name associated with the theory of evolution by natural selection, despite the fact that if Wallace had published his article without first sending it to Darwin, he would’ve been entirely credited with the idea!

Wallace never expressed resentment about this and remained a huge fan of Darwin’s work. His role and Darwin’s support ensured his work and name were suddenly well-known in the scientific community. His collections provided the basis to the 21 books he wrote, as well as 700+ articles and essays, however he also engaged with progressive politics on topics including workers’ rights and land ownership which distanced him from many of his peers. He never held a permanent position in any job and he lost the profits from his collections through bad investments, and so his income came only from his publications and marking school exam papers.

Despite now being acknowledged as co-theorising evolution by natural selection with Darwin, his contribution to science was largely forgotten. However, now you know who he his you can go and spread the word!

Photo by Danielle Stern

Finally, the quote below is an extract from a letter written by Wallace to the Mechanics Institution describing his love for forests. Would you want to follow in Wallace’s footsteps and discover the magic of exploring tropical ecosystems? Check out our expeditions and join us for the experience of a lifetime!

“Here no one who has any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be disappointed; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, the strange buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or furrowed stems of others, the curious and even extraordinary creepers and climbers which wind around them, hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, sometimes curling and twisting on the ground like great serpents, then mounting to the very tops of the trees, thence throwing down roots and fibres which hang waving in the air, or twisting round each other form ropes and cables of every variety of size and often of the most perfect regularity. These, and many other novel features – the parasitic plants growing on the trunks and branches, the wonderful variety of the foliage, the strange fruits and seeds that lie rotting on the ground – taken altogether surpass description, and produce feelings in the beholder of admiration and awe. It is here, too, that the rarest birds, the most lovely insects, and the most interesting mammals and reptiles are to be found. Here lurk the jaguar and the boa-constrictor, and here amid the densest shade the bell-bird tolls his peal.”

Alfred Russel Wallace on tropical forest in Brazil in his 1849 letter to the members of the Mechanics’ Institution, published in Wallace, 1905 (p. 270).

Photo by Benjamin Sadd