Revista Chilena de Historia Natural 82 (1): 17-42, 2009
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Endemism at different spatial scales: an example with Carabidae (Coleoptera: Insecta) of
austral South America
In this paper we perform an endemicity analysis using ca 4,000 distributional records
from 426 carabid species/subspecies distributed along austral South America. We used the program NDM/VNDM which implements a
fill function (R. fill) to heuristically assign species’ potential occurrence from observed presences. In the present analysis we use
different grid sizes, and also we explore different values for the fill function (R. fill). The areas of endemism identified by NDM/VNDM
were compared with previous biogeographical hypotheses. Some resulting areas of endemism were recognized through the whole
range of grid sizes, while others could only be identified by using a particular grid size. In general, the use of small cells helped identify
disjunct areas of endemism, as well as small ones, whereas big cells were convenient for the identification of broad areas that
appeared as fragmented if smaller cells were used. In general, as R.fill function increased, the number of recognized areas of
endemism and endemic species also increased. Our results show that areas of endemism with diverse traits can be derived from a
singular combination of R. fill and grid size, emphasizing the importance of exploring different analytical options during the identification
of distributional patterns.
Key words:
endemicity analysis,
spatial scale, Carabidae, austral South America
