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Derivation of the freshwater fish fauna of C entral A merica revisited: M yers's hypothesis in the twenty‐first century
Author(s) -
Matamoros Wilfredo A.,
McMahan Caleb D.,
Chakrabarty Prosanta,
Albert James S.,
Schaefer Jacob F.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
cladistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.323
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1096-0031
pISSN - 0748-3007
DOI - 10.1111/cla.12081
Subject(s) - freshwater fish , endemism , fauna , species richness , cenozoic , biology , ecology , panama , clade , fish <actinopterygii> , biogeography , pleistocene , fishery , phylogenetics , paleontology , biochemistry , gene , structural basin
Although attempts to understand C entral A merican freshwater fish provincialism date to the 1960s, early efforts lacked the wealth of distributional data now available. Biogeographic work on C entral A merican freshwater fishes has been largely descriptive and regional, and lacked a broader synthesis. Here we use parsimony analysis of endemicity ( PAE ) to elucidate faunistic relationships between major drainages and to delineate areas of endemism. We then perform a B rooks parsimony analysis ( BPA ) on the resulting areas. The PAE recovered a primary division between four P acific and six A tlantic slope areas of endemism. In contrast, the BPA recovered two C entral A merican geographic clades, one sharing a history with N orth A merica and the other with S outh A merica. Fish diversity is uneven across C entral A merica, with greater diversity in areas adjacent to the more species‐rich regions of N orth and S outh A merica. In northern and nuclear C entral A merica, the paucity of ostariophysan freshwater fishes such as catfishes and characins (groups that dominate adjacent regions) contrasts with high species richness of poeciliids and cichlids. Results of this study are consistent with M yer's hypothesis that poeciliids and cichlids dispersed to N orthern or N uclear M iddle A merica early in the C enozoic, long before the P lio‐ P leistocene rise of the I sthmus of P anama.