Quantifying phytogeographical regions of Australia using geospatial turnover in species composition.

ABSTRACT: The largest digitized dataset of land plant distributions in Australia assembled to date (750,741 georeferenced herbarium records; 6,043 species) was used to partition the Australian continent into phytogeographical regions. We used a set of six widely distributed vascular plant groups and three non-vascular plant groups which together occur in a variety of landscapes/habitats across Australia. Phytogeographical regions were identified using quantitative analyses of species turnover, the rate of change in species composition between sites, calculated as Simpson's beta. We propose six major phytogeographical regions for Australia: Northern, Northern Desert, Eremaean, Eastern Queensland, Euronotian and South-Western. Our new phytogeographical regions show a spatial agreement of 65% with resp

SUBMITTER: Gonzalez-Orozco CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3962426 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature