Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 81 (2): 185-203, 2008
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Finding patterns of distribution for freshwater phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish, by means of
parsimony analysis of endemicity
J. PABLO OYANEDEL, CAREN VEGA-RETTER, SERGIO SCOTT, LUIS FELIPE HINOJOSA & RODRIGO
During the last decades, limnological studies on Chilean systems have contributed to
know the species composition and main environmental variables of many water bodies distributed over a wide latitudinal interval, from
18º to 53º S. However, we still lack of a comprehensive view about the structure and functioning of regional freshwaters. In this work
we review the available information about pelagic biota from Chilean basins, in order to reveal patterns of species distribution and their
possible association with environmental variables. We built presence-absence matrices for phytoplankton, zooplankton and fish over
lakes and basins. From this database, we performed parsimony analysis of endemicity as a tool for determining fundamental
distribution patterns of freshwater biota. Also, we assessed the relationship between species occurrences and some available site-
related variables. Our results indicated that latitude exerted the strongest influence on species distribution, although altitude, longitude,
and area also exerted significant effects for some groups. On the other hand, our results suggest a relationship between the degree of
vagility of the groups and the degree of metacommunity structuring, related to the number of endemicity areas.
limnology, lakes,
plankton, biogeography, Chile, CCA
