Phytogeographical relationships among high mountain areas in the Baetic Ranges (South Spain)

Abstract

The Mediterranean area is regarded nowadays as one of the hot-spots of world biodiversity. The Baetic ranges in Spain have such a large number of endemic plant taxa that the territory has been recognized as a well-defined biogeographical unit. These endemic taxa tend to concentrate on disjunct highland areas that have been described consequently as 'highland islands'. Despite the importance and complexity of these sites, the research carried out so far has produced only descriptive classifications. These approaches overlook the relationships between the sites and do not serve to identify the main centres of endemism. Herein, multivariate analysis techniques (cluster analysis and reciprocal averaging) and the parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE), applied to the 222 orophilous endemic taxa of the Baetic ranges, have been used to reveal the floristic similarities between the areas involved, to identify the centres of endemism and to re-assess the previous classifications. Four centres of endemism are defined, one siliceous and three calcareous. The most outstanding feature in the Baetic ranges is precisely the floristic difference between siliceous and calcareous mountains. Calcareous territories extend along a SW-NE axis in line with the oceanic-continental gradient. The nature of the soil in the vast siliceous and calcareous-dolomitic territories of the Sierra Nevada is probably the cause of the remarkable floristic diversity. Not surprisingly, in our analysis these areas stand out as centres of endemism. We conclude that previous biogeographical classifications of the ranges are too rigid and do not properly reflect the floristic similarities of the area under study.

Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia

“…The region has long been the focus of palaeoenvironmental research, particularly because it was a refugium during several different glacial periods for temperate and Mediterranean flora and fauna (Hewitt, 1999;Barroso et al, 2006c;Gómez and Lunt, 2007). Even today, southeastern Iberia is considered a biodiversity hotspot (Mota et al, 2002;Carrión et al, 2003). Though these clement ecosystems were considerably more widespread across Europe during interglacial periods (Wenzel, 2007), the diversity and longevity of temperate forest ecosystems late into the Middle Pleistocene in southeastern Iberia distinguishes the ecological potential of this European subregion.…”

Selection of an endemic flora reserve network and its biogeographical significance in the Baetic ranges (Southern Spain)

“…If the biogeographic work of Sainz-Ollero and Hernández-Bermejo (1985) is taken into consideration, the first four localities selected by ResNet correspond to the four different sectors proposed for the Baetic high mountains by these authors. If we take into account the four endemicity centres recognized by Mota et al (2002), the correspondence is also remarkably exact. In fact, the first five localities are sufficient to include a representation of each of these centres.…”

“…In fact, the first five localities are sufficient to include a representation of each of these centres. The diversity that signifies the radical difference between the siliceous localities and the calcareous ones (Mota et al, 2002) is also gathered in the dataset, since Siliceous Sierra Nevada appears among the most important massifs while the following nine massifs are of calcareous nature. The great biogeographical distinctiveness of the proposed solution stresses its reliability and, also, emphasises the suitability of the phytogeographic researches of the flora of the Baetic ranges for the development of the conservation biogeography discipline.…”

“…Occurrence (1) or absence (0) are recorded in the respective cells. Although the matrix is based on previously available data (Mota et al, 2002;Peñas et al, 2005), the information has also been extended with bibliographical data and field research following the methods of the already mentioned works.…”

“…In the other hand, four centres of endemicity have been proposed exclusively for these high mountains areas, which show a radical distinctiveness between calcareous and siliceous sierras (Mota et al, 2002).…”