Areas of endemism in argentina: an analysis using 840 species of plants, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and insects

SZUMIK ET AL. (25 AUTORES MÁS, ALFABÉTICOS); GOLOBOFF, PABLO

San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina

Simposio; XXVII Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society; 2008

Willi Hennig Society

      The generalized notion of endemism implies distri-  butional concordance of different groups of living  taxa. The main goal of this work is to analyze in a  surface of 1 000 000 km2 (between the parallels 21°S  and 32°S) whether it is possible to find areas of  endemism supported by species of groups as diverse as  those included in our data set. Then, the distribution  of 820 species of plants (47 families), mammals (11  families), reptiles (6 families), amphibians (8 families),  birds (19 families) and insects (21 families) is analyzed  by using an optimality criterion to identify areas of  endemism, implemented in the program NDM/  VNDM. This is the largest study ever done in South  America covering such an array of taxonomic diver-  sity, and required the collaboration of numerous  specialists. Unlike many other distributional studies,  the present dataset contains only first-hand records  provided by specialists in the respective groups.  Almost all of these records are connected to a  specimen in one of the major collections of Argentina,  many of them collected by the authors. This implies  that the ID and taxonomy are reliable (and subject to  scrutiny), which is not the case for records downloaded  from data bases on the www. Only those distribution  patterns supported by several taxa are discussed, such  as the Alto Andina area (supported by Camelids,  Aves, Reptiles and Grasses) and the Yungas area  (supported by 43–109 species from all the groups  included).