Phylogenetic classification of the world's tropical forests.

ABSTRACT: Knowledge about the biogeographic affinities of the world's tropical forests helps to better understand regional differences in forest structure, diversity, composition, and dynamics. Such understanding will enable anticipation of region-specific responses to global environmental change. Modern phylogenies, in combination with broad coverage of species inventory data, now allow for global biogeographic analyses that take species evolutionary distance into account. Here we present a classification of the world's tropical forests based on their phylogenetic similarity. We identify five principal floristic regions and their floristic relationships: (i) Indo-Pacific, (ii) Subtropical, (iii) African, (iv) American, and (v) Dry forests. Our results do not suppo

SUBMITTER: Slik JWF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5828595 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature