Patterns of animal endemism in the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany biodiversity hotspot.
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Date
2013
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Abstract
The Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany (MPA) hotspot, as is the case of all such global biodiversity
hotspots, has primarily been recognised based on its high floristic endemism and delimited intuitively.
Boundaries of global biodiversity hotspots have seldom been empirically tested in terms of species
distribution patterns and only a few have been examined for patterns of animal endemism. This thesis
presents the results of a zoogeographical study of all five major vertebrate groups and selected
invertebrate groups in south-eastern Africa, refining the delimitation of the MPA hotspot and
identifying areas and centres of endemism within and around it. It also provides zoogeographical
regionalisation schemata for the whole of south-eastern Africa. The study employed methods of, (a)
preliminary qualitative identification of “Endemic Vertebrate Distributions”, (b) phenetic clustering of
operational geographical units based on species incidence matrices, using the Jaccard’s coefficient of
similarity and the Unweighted Pair-Group Method using Arithmetic means (UPGMA) clustering
algorithm, (c) Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity, and (d) ArcGIS-based mapping of various
measures of endemism (e.g. narrow endemism and weighted endemism).
The results reveal that the MPA hotspot, though defined so due to its exceptional floristic endemism,
is a hotspot for the endemism of animals too, especially for the herpetofauna and invertebrate groups
like the velvet worms, land snails and many others. But the current boundary of the hotspot is
arbitrarily defined and not exactly matching the patterns of animal endemism (and, likely, neither
those in plants). Hence, a greater Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany (GMPA) region of animal
endemism is proposed as a broad priority region of conservation concern, while centres of endemism
within the GMPA are identified and patterns of quantitative measures of endemism are mapped. The
study also proposes a zoogeographical regionalisation placing the GMPA and Highveld regions at the
province rank in the global zoogeographical hierarchy, within the south east African dominion, also
describing zoogeographical districts and assemblages nested within each. Results from the vertebrate
and invertebrate analyses reveals the possibility of a common zoogeographical regionalisation for
south-eastern Africa. The study emphasises the importance of quantitative biogeographical
methodologies in conservation biogeography, in addition to their uses in the theoretical/descriptive
biogeography.
Description
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.
Keywords
Biodiversity--Africa, Southern., Zoogeography--Africa, Southern., Endemic animals--Africa, Southern., Theses--Zoology.