1. To use all species available for such mapping, even the correlated species ones, because they have slightly different distributions. Also, it seems to me that using all species available for such mapping will force a cluster in areas with the same species composition, and this is the objective of the mapping.
Or
2. Exclude the correlated species and use just one of them.
If someone has an opinion about that, I would appreciate.
I think you would want to go with the first approach. A super helpful paper on the issue that I enjoyed (and which you may have seen already?) is: Kreft H, Jetz W. 2010. A framework for delineating biogeographical regions based on species distributions. Journal of Biogeography 37:2029-53.
Check out NatureServe approach, mostly vegetation, soils, topography, hydrology identification and classification of communities or habitats.
I think that it is the point to use correlated species to delineate biogeographic regions. Using an index like Sorenson's you can compare the relative similarity among regional floras. But perhaps there are redundant taxa at certain levels that may swamp the overall similarity at species level, you may need to consider weeding those out or jump up to the genus level. This would of course change your interpretation of the clusters. Be sure to consider the geographic size and adjacency of the units, as the larger areas will incorporate more species and thereby blur the distinction of regions. Cherry picking a subset of adjacent floras can affect the order of branching in a cluster analysis and change your impression of the hierarchy..
I think you would want to go with the first approach. A super helpful paper on the issue that I enjoyed (and which you may have seen already?) is: Kreft H, Jetz W. 2010. A framework for delineating biogeographical regions based on species distributions. Journal of Biogeography 37:2029-53.
What is best depends on purpose and scale/resolution. I would find it most interesting to see a few alternative plant-geographic regions depending on the selection of the plant species. I would include regions based on paleo-endemics, neo-endemics and paleo- plus neo-endemics.
I suggest the use of assemblage taxa to first have overview of the vegetation that took place over time. Systematically select environmentally diagnostic forms/flora that could suggest variation of the environment over time. Depending on your location, however in the case of Nigeria where we have two main climatic season classified as wet and dry; the use of Monoporites annulatus/sp or Charred graminae cuticle could depict dry area while Acrostichum aureum or Zonocostites ramonae suggest wet condition. These can be correlated to show the delineation of the biogeographic regions because the vegetation grown or developed over time in the region is strongly dependent on the interplay of the paleoclimatic condition and sea level changes.
- Badges
- Science method
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Ecology