A revised area taxonomy of phytogeographical regions within the Australian Bioregionalisation Atlas

Ebach, Malte C.; González‐Orozco, Carlos E.; Miller, Joseph T.; Murphy, Daniel J.

doi:10.11646/phytotaxa.208.4.2

Cited by 61 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…New analytical frameworks, objective criteria and larger databases of different taxa are now required for a strongly supported bioregionalization (Kreft & Jetz, 2010;Mackey, Berry, & Brown, 2008;Morrone, 2018). In this sense, biogeographers have advanced greatly in knowledge by discovering new bioregions (Droissart et al, 2018;Ebach, 2015) or by testing and revisiting previous ones (Holt et al, 2013;Morrone, 2014).…”

Section: Humboldt's Legacy and The Concept Of Bioregionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition ofcampo rupestreprovinces in mountaintops of eastern South America

Colli‐Silva

Vasconcelos

Pirani

2019

Journal of Biogeography

104

100

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Aim The Brazilian campo rupestre is a vegetation associated to ancient mountaintops in eastern South America, spread mainly over disjunct areas of the Espinhaço Range and the Chapada dos Veadeiros. These areas hold outstanding levels of plant diversity and endemism, but despite their uniqueness they have been neglected in recent bioregionalizations for the Neotropical region. Given their particular levels of species richness and endemism, we here test the recognition of these as distinct bioregions within the Chacoan dominion. Location Mountaintops of eastern South America. Methods We listed 1,748 angiosperm species endemic to the campo rupestre of the Espinhaço Range and Chapada dos Veadeiros regions, based on the data gathered from the Brazilian Flora 2020 Project. We extracted all occurrence information available from GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) for such list and also for a polygon gathering all the study area, including information from adjacent vegetations. Data went through standard cleaning procedures and a network clustering analysis was performed to delimitate the boundaries of the new bioregions. Results Our data strongly support the recognition of two distinct bioregions along the Espinhaço Range, but none in the Chapada dos Veadeiros. Given their high levels of endemism and singularity within the Chacoan dominion, we formalize two provinces associated to campo rupestre in the Espinhaço Range, naming them as “Chapada Diamantina” and “Southern Espinhaço” provinces. Within the latter province, three districts are also recognized, based on this and previous studies: “Diamantina Plateau”, “Grão‐Mogol” and “Iron Quadrangle” districts. Main conclusions The formalization of new and previously described bioregions highlights the campo rupestre as a vegetation harbouring outstanding levels of species richness and endemism in South America, contributing to a better understanding of biogeographical patterns in the Neotropics. Also, as we follow the International Code of Area Nomenclature as a device to standardize recognition of bioregions, this shall facilitate further biogeographical and conservation studies in these areas. Further assessments with new and revisited data are needed to enable minor scale bioregionalization within the Chacoan dominion.

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Section: Humboldt's Legacy and The Concept Of Bioregionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition ofcampo rupestreprovinces in mountaintops of eastern South America

Colli‐Silva

Vasconcelos

Pirani

2019

Journal of Biogeography

104

100

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“…Some biogeographical regionalizations (e.g. Ebach, Murphy, González‐Orozco, & Miller, ; López, Menni, Donato, & Miquelarena, ; Morrone, , ) have followed the nomenclatural conventions set out in the International Code of Area Nomenclature (ICAN; Ebach et al., ). ICAN provides a universal naming system to standardize area names used in biogeography and other disciplines, where names are grouped under more inclusive area names to represent a biogeographical hierarchy (kingdoms, regions, dominions, provinces and districts).…”

Section: Steps Of a Biogeographical Regionalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The spectre of biogeographical regionalization

Morrone

2018

Journal of Biogeography

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A biogeographical regionalization is a hierarchical system that categorizes geographical areas in terms of their biotas. I provide a general protocol to undertake biogeographical regionalizations, that consists of seven steps: (1) defining the study area; (2) assembling distributional data; (3) identifying natural areas; (4) discovering area relationships; (5) defining boundaries/transition zones; (6) regionalization and (7) area nomenclature. Natural biogeographical units are useful for people undertaking different types of analyses, like macroecologists, evolutionary biologists, systematists and conservationists. Biogeographical regionalizations may help biogeographers communicate more effectively between themselves and discover opportunities to work on common problems, contributing to the development of a truly integrative biogeography.

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“…Although delineations of Australian biomes and phytogeographical regions have been previously performed (Crisp et al 2004, Ebach et al 2015, our datasets only reflected a single plant group and so are not directly comparable. Nevertheless, it is clear that in both of the datasets tested and at the natural scale of one, modularity SA detected fewer large modules showing more concise bioregions.…”

Section: Utility Of Network Approaches For Bioregionalisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clustering analyses have been commonly used to identify biogeographical regions and are still widely used today (Milligan and Cooper 1987, Gonzalez-Orozco et al 2014b, Ebach et al 2015. In the WPGMA (weighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages) clustering algorithm used in the Biodiverse software package (Laffan et al 2010), a distance or turnover metric compares the composition of taxa between cells to create a similarity tree or dendrogram, with cells that are grouped within the same branch being more similar.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A comparison of network and clustering methods to detect biogeographical regions

2017

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Bioregions are an important concept in biogeography, and are key to our understanding of biodiversity patterns across the world. The use of networks in biogeography to produce bioregions is a relatively novel approach that has been proposed to improve upon current methods. However, it remains unclear if they may be used in place of current methods and/or offer additional biogeographic insights. We compared two network methods to detect bioregions (modularity and map equation) with the conventional distance-based clustering method. We also explored the relationship between network and biodiversity metrics. For the analysis we used two datasets of iconic Australian plant groups at a continental scale, Acacia and eucalypts, as example groups. The modularity method detected fewer large bioregions produced the most succinct bioregionalisation for both plant groups corresponding to Australian biomes, while map equation detected many small bioregions including interzones at a natural scale of one. The clustering method was less sensitive than network methods in detecting bioregions. The network metric called participation coefficient from both network partition methods identified interzones or transition zones between bioregions. Furthermore, another network metric (betweenness) was highly correlated to richness and endemism. We conclude that the application of networks to biogeography offers a number of advantages and provides novel insights. More specifically, our study showed that these network partition methods were more efficient than the clustering method for bioregionalisation of continental-scale data in: 1) the identification of bioregions and 2) the quantification of biogeographic transition zones using the participation coefficient metric. The use of network methods and especially the participation coefficient metric adds to bioregionalisation by identifying transition zones which could be useful for conservation purposes and identifying biodiversity hotspots.

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A revised area taxonomy of phytogeographical regions within the Australian Bioregionalisation Atlas

Cited by 61 publications

References 42 publications

Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition ofcampo rupestreprovinces in mountaintops of eastern South America

Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition ofcampo rupestreprovinces in mountaintops of eastern South America

The spectre of biogeographical regionalization

A comparison of network and clustering methods to detect biogeographical regions

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