Patterns and drivers of zoogeographical regions of terrestrial vertebrates in China

Abstract

Aim Zoogeographical regionalizations have recently seen a revived interest, which has provided new insights into biogeographical patterns. However, few quantitative studies have focused on zoogeographical regions of China. Here, we analyse zoogeographical regions for terrestrial vertebrates in China and how these regions relate to environmental and geological drivers and evaluate levels of cross‐taxon congruence. Location China. Methods We applied hierarchical clustering and non‐metric multidimensional scaling ordination to βsim dissimilarity matrices to delineate zoogeographical regions of China, based on the species distribution of 2102 terrestrial vertebrates in 50 × 50 km grid cells. We used generalized linear models and deviance partitioning to investigate the roles of current climate, past climate change, vegetation and geological processes in shaping the zoogeographical regions. Finally, we used Mantel and Kruskal–Wallis tests to evaluate the levels of cross‐taxon congruence. Results Cluster analyses revealed 10 major zoogeographical regions: South China, the Yungui Plateau, Taiwan, North China, Northeast China, the Inner Mongolia Plateau, Northwest China, the Longzhong Plateau, the Tibetan Plateau and East Himalaya. In contrast to previous regionalizations, a major split was identified by clustering grid cell assemblages and dividing the eastern and western parts of China, followed by the northern part of China. Deviance partitioning showed that current climate and geological processes explained most of the deviance both jointly and independently. Congruence in species composition of endotherms and ectotherms was surprisingly low. Main conclusions We propose new zoogeographical regions for China based on our quantitative methods. In contrast to previous regionalizations, we consider Central China as a part of South China and identify the Longzhong Plateau and Taiwan as independent regions. While our results strongly support the notion of a broad biogeographical transition zone in East Asia, they also suggest a major south–north‐oriented Palaearctic‐Oriental boundary in China.

Geographical and temporal origins of terrestrial vertebrates endemic to Taiwan

“…For instance, 12 birds and five mammals originated from the Eastern Himalayas, whereas a majority of ectotherms colonized from the nearby regions such as South China and Japan. This incongruence among lineages is consistent with previous studies that focused on the pairwise similarities of species composition (He et al., ; Holt et al., ). It has been reported that different lineages showed varied biogeographical patterns in response to the geological and climatic history (Wang et al., ), which is partly due to different dispersal capabilities and thermal tolerances.…”

“…We compared models with two parameters (d: dispersal and e: extinction) against models with three parameters (d, e, and j: founder‐event speciation) and used Akaike's information criterion (AIC) to select the best biogeographical model (Matzke, ). The geographical distributions of species were coded as presence/absence in 12 biogeographical regions (He, Kreft, Gao, Wang, & Jiang, ; Kreft & Jetz, ), namely, Taiwan (TW), South China (SC), North China & Korea (NCK), Japan (JP), the Eastern Himalayas (EH), the Malay Archipelago (ML), Indochina (INC), India & Sri Lanka (INL), Australian (AU), Americas (AM), Africa (AF) and the Palaearctic (PA) (Supporting Information Appendix S2: Figure S2.1). To confirm our findings, we repeated the ancestral range estimates using four independent time trees.…”

Phylogenetic and Functional Structure of Wintering Waterbird Communities Associated with Ecological Differences

“…Multiple drivers have shaped the biogeographical regions of the world 2 . Generally, sharp changes in climatic conditions determine extant biogeographical boundaries 2 – 4 . Limited divergences occur in areas with abrupt climatic transitions 5 .…”

Network‐ and distance‐based methods in bioregionalization processes at regional scale: An application to the terrestrial mammals of Iran

“…Bioregionalization exercises based on species occurrence data often rely on species turnover and distance-based clustering methods (e.g. González-Orozco, Laffan, Knerr, & Miller, 2013;He, Kreft, Gao, Wang, & Jiang, 2017;Kreft & Jetz, 2010). Recently, a network-based method based on a community-detection algorithm known as Infomap has been put forward for identifying bioregions (Vilhena & Antonelli, 2015).…”