Identifying areas and centers of endemism in the Gran Chaco with Fabaceae as a diversity indicator.

ABSTRACT: The Gran Chaco ecoregion is the second largest forest in South America and exhibits the highest deforestation rate in the world, threatened by the expansion of agriculture, lodging and cattle grazing. The Chacoan endemism richness has still been not adequately investigated. In this work, we detected areas of endemism (AEs) and centers of endemism (CEs) using Fabaceae as a proxy, with a novel combination of analyses to explore the endemism distribution pattern of Chacoan plants: NDM-VNDM analyses to detect AEs, and endemic indexes and clustering to detect CEs. We recovered regions with high concentration of endemic and highly restricted taxa: (1) Sierra Chaco; (2) Sierra/Arid Chaco ecotone; (3) the interior Dry Chaco; (4) the upper Paraguay River Basin; and (5) the Low Paraguay-Paraná River

SUBMITTER: Morales M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11926246 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature