Complex origins of the Lusitania biogeographic province and northeastern Atlantic fishes

Abstract

The Lusitania Province encompasses the warm temperate marine waters between the southern end of the English Channel, in the North, and Cape Juby or Cape Blanco, in the South, including the Mediterranean and the archipelagoes of the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands. Briggs and Bowen (2012) proposed that the warm temperate provinces, although retaining their provincial status, should be grouped with the adjacent tropical ones. Thus, they included the Lusitania Province in a warm eastern Atlantic region. We argue that the time elapsed since the Miocene was sufficient to allow the evolution of endemic species, genera and some higher rank taxa, a finding that emphasizes the convenience to avoid the integration of the province in this larger region. The tropicality index for the Lusitania Province is 1.82, indicating a prevalence of warm water over cold water fish. However, this value is strongly biased by the large differences between the Macaronesian archipelagos (4.08) and the mainland coasts of the Lusitania Province (0.66).

Macroecological analysis of the fish fauna inhabiting Cymodocea nodosa seagrass meadows

“…Fish species were arranged in seven bioclimatic categories according to their worldwide distribution (Froese & Pauly, ), and a previous categorization from the study region (Henriques et al , ), including: (1) cold‐temperate, species that have their southern limits at, or near, the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula and extend in range into the North Sea, or towards boreal latitudes; (2) Macaronesian, species exclusively occurring in the Macaronesian archipelagos; (3) Mediterranean, species that only occur in the temperate Mediterranean Sea; (4) temperate, species present in the whole temperate Lusitanian Province ( sensu Almada et al , ), i . e .…”

“…e . species that have their southern limit in Morocco and the Mediterranean, but not in tropical Africa; (5) tropical, species ranging from tropical west Africa to the entrance of the Mediterranean and the south of the Iberian Peninsula, or species occurring in the Red Sea and tropical west Indian ocean; (6) warm‐temperate, species occurring from the Mediterranean and north‐western coasts of Africa to the western entrance of the English Channel; (7) widely distributed, species present in the entire Lusitanian Province (Almada et al , ), reaching the tropical east Atlantic Ocean, i . e .…”

Ichthyofauna of the Selvagens Islands. Do small coastal areas show high species richness in the northeastern Atlantic?

“…This is to be expected when we consider that the Canaries are the nearest neighbour to the Selvagens Islands (153 km) while Madeira and the Azores are at a distance of 251 km and 1127 km, respectively. Also, the Canary Islands are the largest and the oldest of the Macaronesian archipelagos and have the highest species richness, yielding 258 coastal fish species, while Madeira has 186 species and the Azores 148 species (Almada et al 2013). …”

“…The relative contributions of each biogeographic region to the Selvagens Islands were defined according to species distribution data provided by Froese & Pauly (2012) and Almada et al (2013). The biogeographic units follow the classification provided by Henriques et al (2007): tropical west African species (TAS); warm-temperate species (WTS); cold-temperate species (CTS); temperate species (TES).…”

“…Recently, Almada et al (2013) have shown the *Correspondence: Frederico Almada, Eco-Ethology Investigation Unit, ISPA -Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas, Sociais e da Vida, Rua Jardim do Tabaco 34, 1149-041, Lisboa, Portugal. E-mail: falmada@ispa.pt + distinctiveness of the Macaronesia ichthyofauna compared with the continental African and European regions at the same latitude and its close affinity with west African tropical communities.…”