The state of living or occurring in different geographic areas, used to describe populations of organisms that cannot interbreed because they're physically separated.
From Greek 'allo-' (other) and 'patria' (homeland), combining to mean 'different homeland.' The term was coined in the early 20th century by biologists studying how geographic isolation drives species evolution.
Allopatry is nature's way of drawing a line on a map—Darwin's finches in the Galápagos islands separated by ocean became different species because they literally couldn't visit each other, and that isolation is what makes allopatry such a powerful engine of evolution.
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