Phytogeographical relationships and analysis of the flora of South Texas Plains

Abstract

The southernmost tip of Texas is a part of the Tamaulipan Province of northeastern Mexico which some authors consider in the Madrean Subkingdom of the Holarctic Kingdom, while others the “Xerofitica Mexicana” of the Neotropical Kingdom. To shed more light on this question, a natural flora of fourteen counties in the S TX Plains ecoregion, South Texas Plains flora (S TX), was compiled, studied from a biogeographical perspective, and analyzed in this work. The analysis was based primarily on the species and genera distribution outlines. Phylogenetic literature was searched to find relationships, patterns of migrations, and geographical connections of the species of major clades. Taxonometric and geographic spectra of the S TX flora were obtained and compared with those of two other floras in southern Texas: SC Texas (EP, or Edwards Plateau) and Big Bend Region (BB). There are 1250 native species in 553 genera and 117 families in the S TX flora. These species were classified into 25 geographic (floristic) elements. Herein is presented a checklist of S TX accompanied by the geoelement descriptions, a comparison of geographical spectra of the species and genera in all three floras, and the biogeographical analysis of the S TX flora. South TX, having a flat topography and being on the crossroads of migration routes, has multiple connections with adjacent floristic centers. The Tamaulipan endemism is not particularly high (8% in S TX) in comparison with much higher Chihuahuan endemism in BB (23% in BB; 10% in S TX). Proportions of taxa of the largest families in the three southern Texas floras show much higher numbers of tropical-subtropical, Tamaulipan, Gulf Coast, and Mesoamerican (coastal) species in the S TX flora in comparison with those of EP and BB. North temperate, E North American, and Prairie species are best represented in EP (47%), followed by S TX (36%), with only 17% in BB. The majority of the BB differential species are in the Chihuahuan, SW N American, Sonoran/Apachian, and the Madrean geoelements. The genera of the largest family, Asteraceae, that are differential among the three floras show importance of the Mexican (Madrean) centers of diversity as well as migrations from the Tethyan Subkingdom in the assembly of the S TX flora. Tethyan connections are also evident among the Boraginaceae s. str. and some other groups found in the flora. The spectra of generic and specific geographical elements of S TX illustrate transitional position of its flora. It represents an ecotone between the Western (Madrean) and the Eastern (Atlantic and Gulf Coast) N American Regions, with a very high influence of the various Neotropical elements and a higher affinity to the EP flora than to that of BB.

Areas of Endemism of Plants in the South-Central and Southwestern Nearctic Region

“…Two areas in southern Texas (Supplementary Appendix S1), BB and S TX, represent the northern parts of the Chihuahuan and Tamaulipan subprovinces of Takhtajan (1986) respectively. S TX and EP (of the Prairie province) also represent an ecotone between the floras of the southwestern (Madrean) and eastern (Atlantic) regions (Saghatelyan, 2015, 2017). The floras of the Sonoran and Mojave Deserts in southwestern Arizona, northwestern Mexico, and southeastern California represent the Sonoran province/subprovince of all authors.…”

“…One of the major and long recognized biotic boundaries in North America is the east to west boundary (Katinas et al, 2004;Escalante et al, 2013;Gámez et al, 2016;Mishler et al, 2020). In the southern United States, it passes through Texas (Saghatelyan, 2009(Saghatelyan, , 2015(Saghatelyan, , 2017, where it separates almost adjacent floras (Supplementary Appendix S1), the flora of Big Bend National Park (BB) from the floras of Edwards Plateau (EP) and South Texas Plains (S TX). Texas lies on the intersection of the Madrean and Atlantic regions in Takhtajan's (1986) floristic system, as well as close to the Nearctic/Neotropical Mexican Transition Zone of Morrone (2010) and Halffter and Morrone (2017).…”

Winners and losers in dryland reforestation: species survival, growth, and recruitment along a 33‐year planting chronosequence

“…Although plant species richness at small spatial scales (km 2 ) is comparable with that of the broader southern United States, unusually sharp gradients in both precipitation and hydro‐edaphic conditions across the region cause rapid species turnover, which results in high beta diversity in both flora and fauna (Flores 2019; Perez et al 2021). Numbers of bird and Lepidopteran species regionally are among the highest in the continental United States, and many species of plants and animals found in the region have very limited distributions within the United States and are more widespread in Mexico and Central America (Stanford 1993; Brush 2015; Jenkins et al 2015; Kartesz 2015; Saghatelyan 2017). The historic areal extent of undisturbed habitat in the LRGV is believed to have been reduced by over 95%, with a slightly higher rate in the Rio Grande floodplain than in areas more distant from the river (Leslie 2016).…”