DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS: A MICROSCALE ANALYSIS

CORREA, CAROLINA M.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 35th Annual Meeting of the Willi Hennig Society - XII Reunión de Cladística y Biogeografía; 2016

Willi Hennig Society

DISTRIBUTION PATTERNS: A MICROSCALE ANALYSISCarolina M. Correa *Unidad Ejecutora Lillo (UEL)- CONICET , San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán, Argentina. correa.carolinamaria@gmail.comThe program VNDM is a grid based method that identifies areas of endemism as the congruent distributions of diverse taxa.The main interest of this study is to evaluate the performance of the criteria applied by VNDM to analyzed records in a more local scale considering that this methodology has been thought to treat historical problems or more general distributions. The study region is a province in NW Argentina, Tucumán, characterized by its small surface (22,524 km2) and high biodiversity with a variety of biogeographic divisions and microenvironments. The dataset includes around 500 species of vascular plants, amphibians, reptiles and insects ributed in the study region but also present outside of the study region. For a better understanding of the patterns obtained, the higher taxonomic groups are analyzed both together and separately. Additionally, some parameters of VNDM are modified to explore its influence in these micro scale analyses. One of these parameters is the fill option; records are analyzed using gradually larger values of fill (e.g. 40%, 80%) and finally analyzed using a maximum polygon. Regarding grid size, the dataset is analyzed using grids that range from 50 km2 to extremely small cells of 1.5 km2. Lastly, patterns of congruent restricted distributions reflecting previous proposals of phytogeographic regions, are expected to be found here, reflecting strata with variable height and physicial conditions well known in the study area.