Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
remaining provinces (Falkland Islands, Magellanic Forest, and Magellanic Moor-
land).TheseparationsequenceofthesethreelattershowstheFalklandIslandsas
the sister area to the Magellanic Forest-Magellanic Moorland pair. BPA produced
a single cladogram (135 steps, consistency index of 0.74, and retention index
of 0.55), with the same topology. The dispersal-vicariance analysis showed that
the most frequent dispersal events involved the following areas: Maule-Valdivian
Forest (21.40%), Valdivian Forest-Maule (12.06%), Maule-Central Chilean
(18.63%), and Central Chilean-Maule (9.00%). The most frequent vicariance
events involved the separation of the Falkland Islands from the Magellanic
Forest-Magellanic Moorland pair.
Posadas and Morrone (2003) concluded that the complex relationships
between the north of the Subantarctic subregion and the Central Chilean subre-
gion could be due to dispersal because this process includes about 61% of the
dispersal events. Furthermore, the most frequent dispersal events always involved
the Maule province in relation to the Central Chilean subregion or the Valdivian
Forest, implying the capacity of its biota to colonize other areas. On one hand,
the apparent relationship between the Valdivian Forest and the Maule with the
Central Chilean subregion in the general area cladograms obtained may be a dis-
tortion because these methods are unable to discriminate the dispersal phenom-
ena that could generate reticulate area relationships. On the other hand, the rela-
tionship between the three southern provinces of the Subantarctic subregion may
be caused by vicariance events, which are supported by the application of DIVA,
which showed low dispersal frequencies between these areas.
