GLOBAL ADVANCES IN BIOGEOGRAPHY Edited by Lawrence Stevens Global Advances in Biogeography Edited by Lawrence Stevens Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2012 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Dragana Manestar Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published March, 2012 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechopen.com Global Advances in Biogeography, Edited by Lawrence Stevens p. cm. ISBN 978-953-51-0454-4 Contents Preface IX Part 1 Biogeographic Theory: Testing Concepts and Processes 1 Chapter 1 Influences of Island Characteristics on Plant Community Structure of Farasan Archipelago, Saudi Arabia: Island Biogeography and Nested Pattern 3 Khalid Al Mutairi, Mashhor Mansor, Magdy El-Bana, Saud L. Al-Rowaily and Asyraf Mansor Chapter 2 Biogeographic Hierarchical Levels and Parasite Speciation 23 Hugo H. Mejía-Madrid Chapter 3 Passive Long-Distance Migration of Apterous Dryinid Wasps Parasitizing Rice Planthoppers 49 Toshiharu Mita, Yukiko Matsumoto, Sachiyo Sanada-Morimura and Masaya Matsumura Chapter 4 Phylogenetic Systematics and Biogeography: Using Cladograms in Historical Biogeography Methods 61 Raúl Contreras-Medina and Isolda Luna-Vega Part 2 Regional Biogeography of Individual Taxa 71 Chapter 5 Biogeographic Insights in Central American Cycad Biology 73 Alberto S. Taylor B., Jody L. Haynes, Dennis W. Stevenson, Gregory Holzman and Jorge Mendieta Chapter 6 Establishment of Biogeographic Areas by Distributing Endemic Flora and Habitats (Dominican Republic, Haiti R.) 99 Eusebio Cano Carmona and Ana Cano Ortiz VI Contents Chapter 7 Biogeography of Intertidal Barnacles in Different Marine Ecosystems of Taiwan – Potential Indicators of Climate Change? 119 Benny K.K. Chan and Pei-Fen Lee Chapter 8 Biogeography of Chilean Herpetofauna: Biodiversity Hotspot and Extinction Risk 137 Marcela A. Vidal and Helen Díaz-Páez Part 3 Biogeography of Complex Landscapes 155 Chapter 9 Contributions of Cladistic Biogeography to the Mexican Transition Zone 157 Isolda Luna-Vega and Raúl Contreras-Medina Chapter 10 The Biogeographic Significance of a Large, Deep Canyon: Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, Southwestern USA 169 Lawrence E. Stevens Chapter 11 Aquatic Crustaceans in the Driest Desert on Earth: Reports from the Loa River, Atacama Desert, Antofagasta Region, Chile 209 Patricio De los Ríos-Escalante and Alfonso Mardones Lazcano Chapter 12 Rare and Endemic Species in Conacu-Negreṣti Valley, Dobrogea, Romania 219 Monica Axini Part 4 Evolutionary Biogeography of Macrotaxa 255 Chapter 13 Biogeography of Flowering Plants: A Case Study in Mignonettes (Resedaceae) and Sedges (Carex, Cyperaceae) 257 Santiago Martín-Bravo and Marcial Escudero Chapter 14 Biogeography of Dragonflies and Damselflies: Highly Mobile Predators 291 Melissa Sánchez-Herrera and Jessica L. Ware Chapter 15 Aspects of the Biogeography of North American Psocoptera (Insecta) 307 Edward L. Mockford Chapter 16 Composition and Distribution Patterns of Species at a Global Biogeographic Region Scale: Biogeography of Aphodiini Dung Beetles (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae) Based on Species Geographic and Taxonomic Data 329 Francisco José Cabrero-Sañudo Preface Global Advances in Biogeography is the result of an open invitation from InTech-Open Access Publisher , to compile authorities on biogeography from around the world. Numerous authors proposed chapters on their work, and those presented here are the fruit of those proposals. As editor of this book, it has been my pleasure to collaborate with these many, fine contributing scientists. This text brings forth a great amount of fresh information on the biogeography and ecology of poorly known taxa and landscapes, and explores biogeographic processes not previously studied. The assembled work is an anthology of issues in modern biogeography, with topics ranging across regional to global spatial scales, and ecological to evolutionary temporal scales. Among the fields reported upon here are landscape ecology, biogeographic range analysis, morphological and molecular phylogeography, cladistics, and tectonics, seasoned with considerable natural history. Thus, the book reflects the broad range of interdisciplinary fields that contribute to contemporary biogeography. This book explores four overlapping themes in biogeography among multiple plant and animal groups, across subcontinental to global spatial scales, and over evolutionary time. These four themes include: 1) biogeographic theory and tests of concepts and processes; 2) the regional biogeography of individual taxa; 3) historical and contemporary biogeography of complex landscapes; and 4) the evolutionary biogeography of macrotaxa. In the first chapter of the conceptual biogeography section, Khalid Al Mutairi et al. explore the importance of nestedness among the plant species and plant functional groups in the islands of the Farasan Archipelago in Saudi Arabia. Reporting that rare species are more abundant on larger islands, they make the case for greater conservation efforts on larger islands. In the next chapter, Hugo Mejía-Madrid evaluates the roles of heterochrony and ecological fitting in the evolution of helminth fish parasites. Contrary to expectations, helminth speciation lags substantially behind that of their hosts, tending to occur in pulses associated with continent jumps among hosts. Next in this section, Toshiharu Mita et al. combine life history, range analysis, and mitochondrial genetic analyses to explain the puzzling processes through which wingless dryinid wasps from continental Asia have colonized the Pacific islands of Japan and Taiwan. Last in this section, Raúl Contreras-Medina and Isolda Luna-Vega X Preface review the concepts of cladistics methods for use in historical biogeographical studies, including ancestral area analysis, phylogenetic biogeography, cladistic biogeography, comparative phylogeography, and event-based methods. They report that different methods emphasize the importance of different evolutionary processes, such as dispersal, vicariance, extinction, and the biogeographic history of particular taxa, such as endemics. The second section of the book involves the regional biogeography of individual taxa. This section begins with a chapter by Alberto Taylor and his colleagues on the biogeography of cycads in Central America. Their natural history and experimental ecological methods integrate the evolutionary context of the cycad lineage with contemporary autecology, and they elucidate biogeographic patterns and conservation priorities, the latter of which are under-appreciated but pressingly important in Central America. The selection of biodiversity conservation targets is also a primary concern in the subsequent chapter by Eusebio Carmona and Ana Ortiz, who describe the phytogeography of the Island of Hispaniola. They use geological and distribution data on the island’s 1,284 plant genera and more than 2,000 endemic plant taxa to identify 19 biomes there, and they describe complex conservation challenges. The next chapter by Benny Chan and Pei-Fen Lee explores the biogeography of the barnacles of Taiwan, relating taxon distributions to coastal geomorphology and the complex array of oceanic currents around the island. Global climate changes in ocean water temperature may permit southerly, warmwater taxa to expand northward, invading habitat presently occupied by coldwater taxa. The final chapter in this section is by Marcela Vidal and Helen Díaz-Páez, who present the first dynamic biogeographic synthesis of Chilean herpetofauna. Two of the many interesting elements of their synthesis are: a) a positive correlation between body size and conservation risk among the 191 amphibian and reptile taxa that comprise the fauna; and b) evidence of a pronounced attenuation of species richness both northward and southward from central Chile - the former pattern running counter to, and the latter pattern in accord with the temperate-tropical latitudinal species richness gradient that so strongly dominates herpetofaunal biogeography. The third section of the book focuses on regional to sub-continental biogeographic analyses across taxonomic groups in complex landscapes. The first chapter by Isolda Luna-Vega and Raúl Contreras-Medina employs the methods proposed in their previous cladistics chapter (Section 1). They assess the historical biogeography of the Mexican Transition Zone, reporting that, while challenging to interpret, integrated morphological and molecular phylogenetic approaches are needed to advance understanding of the biogeography of complex landscapes. Next, I evaluate the biogeographic significance of large, deep canyons using contemporary range and habitat analyses of the flora and fauna of the Grand Canyon (GC) of the Colorado River and the surrounding ecoregion on the Colorado Plateau. These analyses demonstrate that more than 80 per cent of the species in the region are influenced by GC as a corridor, a barrier, or a refuge - data that is corroborated by growing . GLOBAL ADVANCES IN BIOGEOGRAPHY Edited by Lawrence Stevens Global Advances in Biogeography Edited by Lawrence Stevens Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9,. Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechopen.com Global Advances in Biogeography, Edited. paradigm of island biogeography has been issued * Corresponding Author Global Advances in Biogeography 4 (Lomolino, 2000a), area and distance still play primary roles in alternative theories