Endemism Patterns of Planthoppers (Fulgoroidea) in China

Abstract

Studies on endemism are always of high interest in biogeography and contribute to better understanding of the evolution of species and making conservation plans. The present study aimed to investigate the endemism patterns of planthoppers in China by delimiting centers of endemism and areas of endemism. We collected 6,907 spatial distribution records for 860 endemic planthopper species from various resources. Centers of endemism were identified using weighted endemism values at 1° grid size. Parsimony analysis of endemicity and endemicity analysis were employed to detect areas of endemism at 1°, 1.5°, and 2° grid sizes. Six centers of endemism located in mountainous areas were identified: Taiwan Island, Hainan Island, eastern Yungui Plateau, Wuyi Mountains, western Qinling Mountains, and western Yunnan. We also delimited six areas of endemism, which were generally consistent with centers of endemism. Our findings demonstrated that mountainous areas have an essential role in facilitating the high level of endemism and formation of areas of endemism in planthoppers through the combined effects of complex topography, a long-term stable environment, and geological events. Dispersal ability and distribution of host plants also have important effects on the patterns of planthoppers’ endemism.

Assessing the Diversity and Distribution Pattern of the Speciose Genus Lycocerus (Coleoptera: Cantharidae) by the Global-Scale Data

“…In recent years, a number of biogeographic and evolutionary studies have implemented and applied the areas of endemism (AOEs) to resolve practical issues (Nelson and Platnick, 1981;Anderson, 1994;Huang et al, 2006Huang et al, , 2008Huang et al, , 2010López-Pujol et al, 2011;Yuan et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2018;Noroozi et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2021). The definition of AOEs is generally agreed as a distribution congruence of at least two restricted species (Cracraft, 1985;Harold and Mooi, 1994;Morrone, 1994;Linder, 2001).…”

“…These areas are supposed to be characterized by a stable climate, and they therefore offered considerable opportunities for past speciation and persistence (Jetz et al, 2004). This long-term evolution may explain why AOEs often contain high species richness, which is less predictable by contemporary environment alone (Jetz et al, 2004;López-Pujol et al, 2011;Fjeldså et al, 2012), so dozens of biogeographers and evolutionary biologists have shown their interests in evaluating the causes for the presence of AOEs (Nelson and Platnick, 1981;Anderson, 1994;Huang et al, 2006Huang et al, , 2008Huang et al, , 2010López-Pujol et al, 2011;Yuan et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2018;Noroozi et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2021). The montane system, which accounts for a large portion of biodiversity hotspots and harbors many narrow-ranged species (Orme et al, 2005;Fjeldså et al, 2012;Wu et al, 2017), has been anticipated as refugia with stable climates and heterogeneous topography, and hence facilitates the persistence and speciation (Favre et al, 2015;Zhao et al, 2021).…”

“…This long-term evolution may explain why AOEs often contain high species richness, which is less predictable by contemporary environment alone (Jetz et al, 2004;López-Pujol et al, 2011;Fjeldså et al, 2012), so dozens of biogeographers and evolutionary biologists have shown their interests in evaluating the causes for the presence of AOEs (Nelson and Platnick, 1981;Anderson, 1994;Huang et al, 2006Huang et al, , 2008Huang et al, , 2010López-Pujol et al, 2011;Yuan et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2018;Noroozi et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2021). The montane system, which accounts for a large portion of biodiversity hotspots and harbors many narrow-ranged species (Orme et al, 2005;Fjeldså et al, 2012;Wu et al, 2017), has been anticipated as refugia with stable climates and heterogeneous topography, and hence facilitates the persistence and speciation (Favre et al, 2015;Zhao et al, 2021). Besides, the high rate of endemism is also observed in the island systems (Myers et al, 2000), because island systems are relatively isolated areas, which are vulnerable to sea-level fluctuations, and the discontinuous connection with the source continent and adaptive radiation may promote species accumulation and speciation (Cronk, 1997;Fjeldså et al, 2012).…”

“…Although different algorithms involve different optimality criteria for AOEs, in some cases, more complete results can be obtained via combing two or multiple methods (Linder, 2001;Carine et al, 2009). Among the various methods, two of them are most popular in identifying AOEs (do Prado et al, 2015;Gao et al, 2018;Zhuang et al, 2018;Zhao et al, 2021). One is the parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE), which was originally proposed by Rosen (1988) in the content of paleontology, involving the distributions of taxa from sampling localities in different geological units.…”

“…The two methods are both conducted in a geographical pattern approach . Searches for AOEs are usually conducted in endemic taxa delimited to islands or specific regions of the continent (Huang et al, 2008;do Prado et al, 2015;Lago-Barcia et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2021), whereas only a few studies have been done to elucidate the geographical patterns of organisms on a global scale (Gao et al, 2018;Zhuang et al, 2018).…”