Abstract

We provide a map and shapefile of the 57 biogeographic provinces of the Neotropical region. Recognition of these provinces is based on their endemic species, but their delimitation on the map is based on ecoregions combining climatic, geological, and biotic criteria. These provinces belong to the Antillean, Brazilian and Chacoan subregions, and the Mexican and South American transition zones. We provide a vector file of the biogeographical regionalization by converting the map into a polygon shapefile and a raster file with all provinces.

Key words
biogeographic provinces; Neotropics; regionalization; transition zones

INTRODUCTION

The Neotropical region comprises the tropical areas of South America, Central America, southern and central Mexico, and the Antilles (Morrone 2018MORRONE JJ. 2018. Evolutionary biogeography of the Andean region. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, Boca Raton, 250 p.). In the most recent biogeographic regionalization analyses, 57 provinces have been recognized (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2018, 2020MORRONE JJ. 2020. The Mexican Transition Zone: A natural biogeographic laboratory to study biotic assembly. Springer, Cham, 191 p., Martínez et al. 2017MARTÍNEZ GA, ARANA MD, OGGERO AG & NATALE ES. 2017. Biogeographical relationships and new regionalisation of high-altitude grasslands and woodlands of the Central Pampean Ranges (Argentina), based on vascular plants and vertebrates. Austr Syst Bot 29: 473-488., Apodaca et al. 2019APODACA MJ, KATINAS L & GUERRERO EL. 2019. Hidden areas of endemism: Small units in the south-eastern Neotropics. Syst Biodivers 17: 425-438., Colli-Silva et al. 2019COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733., Arana et al. 2021ARANA MD, NATALE E, FERRETI N, ROMANO G, OGGERO A, POSADAS P, MARTÍNEZ G & MORRONE JJ. 2021. Esquema biogeográfico de la República Argentina. Opera Lilloana vol. 56, San Miguel de Tucumán, 238 p.).

In addition to the different names that these provinces have received (see Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110.), there is little agreement on their precise boundaries, especially when they span over different countries. This is a serious problem, because different authors may consider that they are referring to the same biogeographic province, but their units are not strictly comparable. To unify the different evolutionary biogeographic and ecoregional schemes into a single system, as done for Argentina (Arana et al. 2017ARANA MD, MARTÍNEZ GA, OGGERO AJ, NATALE ES & MORRONE JJ. 2017. Map and shapefile of the biogeographic provinces of Argentina. Zootaxa 4341: 420-422., 2021) and Mexico (Morrone et al. 2017MORRONE JJ, ESCALANTE T & RODRÍGUEZ-TAPIA G. 2017. Mexican biogeographic provinces: Map and shapefiles. Zootaxa 4277: 277-279.), we consider that the boundaries of the ecoregions combining climatic, geological, and biotic criteria with evolutionary units (areas of endemism) are appropriate. Thus, we provide herein a map of the biogeographic provinces of the Neotropical region (following Löwenberg-Neto 2014LÖWENBERG-NETO P. 2014. Neotropical region: A shapefile of Morrone’s (2014) biogeographical regionalization. Zootaxa 3802: 300., Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017MORRONE JJ. 2017. Neotropical biogeography: Regionalization and evolution. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group. Boca Raton, 282 p., 2018, 2020, Martínez et al. 2017MARTÍNEZ GA, ARANA MD, OGGERO AG & NATALE ES. 2017. Biogeographical relationships and new regionalisation of high-altitude grasslands and woodlands of the Central Pampean Ranges (Argentina), based on vascular plants and vertebrates. Austr Syst Bot 29: 473-488., Morrone et al. 2017MORRONE JJ, ESCALANTE T & RODRÍGUEZ-TAPIA G. 2017. Mexican biogeographic provinces: Map and shapefiles. Zootaxa 4277: 277-279., Apodaca et al. 2019APODACA MJ, KATINAS L & GUERRERO EL. 2019. Hidden areas of endemism: Small units in the south-eastern Neotropics. Syst Biodivers 17: 425-438., Colli-Silva et al. 2019COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733., Arana et al. 2021ARANA MD, NATALE E, FERRETI N, ROMANO G, OGGERO A, POSADAS P, MARTÍNEZ G & MORRONE JJ. 2021. Esquema biogeográfico de la República Argentina. Opera Lilloana vol. 56, San Miguel de Tucumán, 238 p.), based on the ecoregions recognized by Olson et al. (2001)OLSON DM ET AL. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: A new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51: 933-938., and the corresponding shapefile.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The map is based on the modified shapefiles of the ecoregions of Olson et al. (2001)OLSON DM ET AL. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: A new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51: 933-938. and the provinces of Löwenberg-Neto (2014)LÖWENBERG-NETO P. 2014. Neotropical region: A shapefile of Morrone’s (2014) biogeographical regionalization. Zootaxa 3802: 300., Morrone et al. (2017)MORRONE JJ, ESCALANTE T & RODRÍGUEZ-TAPIA G. 2017. Mexican biogeographic provinces: Map and shapefiles. Zootaxa 4277: 277-279., Apodaca et al. (2019)APODACA MJ, KATINAS L & GUERRERO EL. 2019. Hidden areas of endemism: Small units in the south-eastern Neotropics. Syst Biodivers 17: 425-438., Colli-Silva et al. (2019)COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733. and Arana et al. (2021)ARANA MD, NATALE E, FERRETI N, ROMANO G, OGGERO A, POSADAS P, MARTÍNEZ G & MORRONE JJ. 2021. Esquema biogeográfico de la República Argentina. Opera Lilloana vol. 56, San Miguel de Tucumán, 238 p.. To facilitate future biogeographic analyses, we provide a vector file (shapefile; .shp extension).

To draw the map, we used as base map the ‘Terrestrial ecoregions of the world’ (Olson et al. 2001OLSON DM ET AL. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: A new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51: 933-938.), redrawing the biogeographic provinces with ArcMap v. 10.1 (ESRI 2012ESRI – ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS RESOURCE INSTITUTE. 2012. ArcGIS Desktop Sofware, Release 10. Redlands, California.) and QGIS v. 2.16.3 (QGIS Development Team 2009QGIS DEVELOPMENT TEAM. 2009. QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation. URL http://qgis.osgeo.org.
http://qgis.osgeo.org... ). This conversion was made in three steps: (1) the geographic location of each province was based on the georeferenced shapefile called base map, (2) new polygons over province limits were created and (3) province names were inserted into the shapefile table.

In the first step, the Neotropical ecoregions were selected, excluding those that belong to the Nearctic and Andean regions sensu stricto (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2015MORRONE JJ. 2015. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Andean region. Zootaxa 3936: 207-236.). In the table of the ecoregion’s shapefile, the names of the Morrone’s regionalization (2014) were inserted for ecoregions with perfect correspondence with the provinces. For the Mexican Neotropical provinces, the polygons of Morrone et al. (2017)MORRONE JJ, ESCALANTE T & RODRÍGUEZ-TAPIA G. 2017. Mexican biogeographic provinces: Map and shapefiles. Zootaxa 4277: 277-279. were merged to the ecoregion shapefile.

In the second step, we modified the boundaries of some ecoregions. Colli-Silva et al. (2019)COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733. proposed two provinces for the Brazilian ‘campos rupestres’. The shapefile provided by Colli-Silva et al. (2019)COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733. was joined with the ecoregions layer, to incorporate this modification, dissolving and renaming the polygons. For the Colombian paramos, Jorge D. Mercado-Gómez provided a shapefile based on Beltrán et al. (2009)BELTRÁN K, SALGADO S, CUESTA F, LEÓN-YÁNEZ S, ROMO LEROUX K, ORTIZ E, CÁRDENAS A & VELÁSTEGUI A. 2009. Distribución espacial, sistemas ecológicos y caracterización florística de los páramos en el Ecuador. EcoCiencia, Proyecto Páramo Andino and Herbario QCA, Quito, 54 p., Morales et al. (2007)MORALES M ET AL. 2007. Atlas de páramos de Colombia. Bogotá, Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt, p. 208., Schargel (2011)SCHARGEL R. 2011. Una reseña de la geografía física de Venezuela, con énfasis en los suelos. BioLlania 10: 11-26., Jiménez-Rivillas et al. (2018)JIMÉNEZ-RIVILLAS C, GARCÍA JJ, QUIJANO-ABRIL MA, DAZA JM & MORRONE JJ. 2018. A new biogeographical regionalisation of the Páramo biogeographic province. Austr Syst Bot 31: 296-310. and Gil-Novoa et al. (2020)GIL-NOVOA J, MORALES-PUENTES M & MERCADO-GÓMEZ J. 2020. Biogeographic origins and floristic affinities of the bryophytes of the Tota-Bijagual-Mamapacha complex in the Páramos of Boyacá, Colombia. Phytotaxa 477: 171-193., which was joined, dissolved, and renamed following Morrone (2021)MORRONE JJ. 2021. Review of the subprovinces and districts of the Páramo biogeographic province, northern South America. Rev Mex Biodivers 92: 1-7.. The boundaries of the Esteros del Iberá province in Uruguay were based on Guerrero et al. (2018)GUERRERO EL, APODACA MJ, DOSIL-HIRIART FD & CABANILLAS PA. 2018. Análisis biogeográfico de los humedales del Sistema fluvial del Río de la Plata basado en plantas trepadoras y epífitas. Rev Mex Biodivers 89: 1190-1200., Apodaca et al. (2019)APODACA MJ, KATINAS L & GUERRERO EL. 2019. Hidden areas of endemism: Small units in the south-eastern Neotropics. Syst Biodivers 17: 425-438. and Elián L. Guerrero (pers. comm.), delimiting the polygons with the map of MVOTMA (2021)MVOTMA. 2021. Humedales. Geoservicios. Montevideo: Ministerio de Vivienda, Ordenamiento Territorial y Medio Ambiente Sitio. https://www.ambiente.gub.uy/geoservicios/.
https://www.ambiente.gub.uy/geoservicios... , to represent Apodaca et al.’s (2019) Figure 16 on the map. Regarding the boundaries of the Argentinean provinces, we modified the vertices of some polygons according to Arana et al. (2021)ARANA MD, NATALE E, FERRETI N, ROMANO G, OGGERO A, POSADAS P, MARTÍNEZ G & MORRONE JJ. 2021. Esquema biogeográfico de la República Argentina. Opera Lilloana vol. 56, San Miguel de Tucumán, 238 p.. For delineating the boundaries of the Mexican provinces extending to Central America, Morrone et al.’s (2017) polygons were merged with the ecoregions, assigning the forest ecoregions to the Chiapas Highlands province, and the southern lowlands ecoregions to the Pacific Lowlands province.

Figure 1
Biogeographic provinces of the Neotropical region.

In the third step, individual shapefiles were generated for each one of the biogeographic provinces. For each polygon, we added the following information in the shapefile table: province name, and subregion or transition zone. Finally, we transformed the complete and individual shapefiles in raster format at a pixel resolution of 30 seconds of arc (≈1 km² at the Equator) to make them compatible with other sources in raster format (v. gr. Hijmans et al. 2005HIJMANS RJ, CAMERON SE, PARRA JL, JONES PG & JARVIS A. 2005. Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. Int J Climatol 25: 1965-1978., Cuervo-Robayo et al. 2014CUERVO-ROBAYO A, TÉLLEZ-VALDÉS O, GÓMEZ-ALBORES MA, VENEGAS-BARRERA CS, MANJARREZ J & MARTÍNEZ-MEYER E. 2014. An update of high-resolution monthly climate surfaces for Mexico. Int J Climatol 34: 2427-2437.).

RESULTS

The map of the biogeographic provinces is represented in Figure 1. These provinces are classified into three subregions, two transition zones and seven dominions:

Antillean subregion: the Antilles and the Bahamas Islands, with seven provinces (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017).

Brazilian subregion: central and southern Mexico, Central America, and northwestern South America, including four dominions and 27 provinces (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017).

Chacoan subregion: southeastern South America, with three dominions and 11 provinces (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017, Colli-Silva et al. 2019COLLI-SILVA M, VASCONCELOS TNC & PIRANI JR. 2019. Outstanding plant endemism levels strongly support the recognition of campo rupestre provinces in mountaintops of eastern South America. J Biogeogr 46: 1723-1733., Arana et al. 2021ARANA MD, NATALE E, FERRETI N, ROMANO G, OGGERO A, POSADAS P, MARTÍNEZ G & MORRONE JJ. 2021. Esquema biogeográfico de la República Argentina. Opera Lilloana vol. 56, San Miguel de Tucumán, 238 p.).

Mexican Transition Zone: mountainous areas of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua north of lake Nicaragua, with five provinces (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017, 2020).

South American Transition Zone: Andean highlands between western Venezuela and Chile, desert areas of coastal Peru and northern Chile, and central western Argentina, with seven provinces (Morrone 2014MORRONE JJ. 2014. Biogeographical regionalisation of the Neotropical region. Zootaxa 3782: 1-110., 2017, 2018, Martínez et al. 2017MARTÍNEZ GA, ARANA MD, OGGERO AG & NATALE ES. 2017. Biogeographical relationships and new regionalisation of high-altitude grasslands and woodlands of the Central Pampean Ranges (Argentina), based on vascular plants and vertebrates. Austr Syst Bot 29: 473-488.).

The map and metadata are freely available and may be downloaded at neotropicalmap.atlasbiogeografico.com. Maps are in vectorial and raster formats, both in SIRGAS2000 geographic projection for South America and in geographic coordinates.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica (PAPIIT) from the Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA, UNAM) under grant IN218520.

REFERENCES

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