Disentangling environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in a Mediterranean hotspot.

ABSTRACT: We determined the environmental correlates of vascular plant biodiversity in the Baetic-Rifan region, a plant biodiversity hotspot in the western Mediterranean. A catalog of the whole flora of Andalusia and northern Morocco, the region that includes most of the Baetic-Rifan complex, was compiled using recent comprehensive floristic catalogs. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) of the different ecoregions of Andalusia and northern Morocco were conducted to determine their floristic affinities. Diversity patterns were studied further by focusing on regional endemic taxa. Endemic and nonendemic alpha diversities were regressed to several environmental variables. Finally, semi-partial regressions on distance matrices were conducted to extract the res

SUBMITTER: Molina-Venegas R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3810881 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature