BIOGEOGRAPHY AND ENDEMISM IN NORTHERN SOUTH AMERICAN AMPHIBIANS: THE AMAZON LOWLANDS AS NATURAL REGION.

CASAGRANDA M. DOLORES; PELOSO PEDRO; CASTROVIEJO-FISHER SANTIAGO ; LYRA MARIANA ; GUAYSAMIN JUAN M. ; FOUQUET ANTOINE ; TWOMEY EVAN ; PRATES IVAN ; SIU-TING KAREN; RIVERA-CORREA MAURICIO ; ROJAS-RUNJAIC FERNANDO J.M .; EMBERT DIRK ; JANSEN MARTIN ; AGUAYO RODRIGO ; APARICIO JAMES ; CHAPARRO JUAN C.; CRAWFORD ANDREW ; DE LA RIVA IGNACIO ; DILL ORRICO VICTOR G; GAGLIARDI GIUSSEPE ; HADDAD CELIO; IVO SIMOES PEDRO ; KÖEHLER JÖRN ; KOK PHILIPPE J.R.; LIMA ALBERTINA ; MORAVEC JIRI ; MUÑOZ ARTURO ; POMBAL JOSÉ P. ; RADA MARCO; REICHLE STEFFEN ; SEÑARIS CELSA J.; TREFAUT-RODRIGUES MIGUEL ; PADIAL, JOSÉ M.

New York

Congreso; XXXI International Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society; 2015

Delimiting areas of endemism is important to understand geographical patterns of species diversity. Here we focus on the Amazon Basin, which despite being considered a natural unit due to its geological/hydrographic origin, its definition as a natural area remains largely ambiguous on biological grounds. Previous studies based on vertebrates have supported the existence of different areas of endemism within the Amazon Basin, such as Xingu and Tapajos. However, it is unclear whether these areas can be considered ?natural regions?, defined by a unique set of species. In spite of its diversity, amphibians have been poorly considered in Amazonian studies, especially when discussing areas of endemism. We analyze distributional data of amphibians in order to test whether the Amazon Basin is an area of endemism, and whether there are other major areas of endemism for amphibians in this region. To do so, we combined taxonomically corrected data from GBIF and our own data into a single database with 40.000 records from 2500 species of amphibians from northern South America. The data were analyzed using NDM-VDM. Our results reveal that the Amazon Basin does not constitute an area of endemism for amphibians. However, the Amazon Domain and the Amazon lowlands were recognized as areas of endemism characterized by sets of widely distributed species. Many other areas of endemism were recovered providing empirical support to hypotheses on areas of endemism previously proposed and revealing a high a number of new areas that will constitute the baseline for further testing.