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Biomes and Biome Types

[Whittaker 1975] defines a biome as follows:

• a grouping of ecosystems on a given continent that are similar in vegetation structure or"physiognomy", in the major features of environment to which this structure is a response, and in some characteristics of their animal communities.

[Whittaker 1975] groups convergent biomes of different continents into biome types. Thus each individual biome is asubset of a broader biome type.

Although Whittaker uses the term "biome type" to describe such world-wide groupings, other authors use the words "biome" and "biome type" synonymously.