Regionalization - Evolutionary Biogeography - page 245

and Page's (1988) regions to include the Tethys Sea, which she considered
important in understanding the composite Indo-Australian area ( fig. 6.2a ) .
Cox (2001) examined the floral kingdoms or realms from de Candolle,
Engler, and Takhtajan and the zoogeographic regions from Sclater and Wal-
lace and analyzed their differences. He reviewed levels of endemism of
Takhtajan's system, concluding that the Cape realm should be treated as
a region of the African realm and that the Antarctic realm should be di-
vided and transferred to the Neotropical and Australian realms. He also con-
sidered the names Neotropical, Nearctic, and Palearctic, used for both flor-
al realms and faunal regions, to be cumbersome and unnecessary, repla-
cing them with the names South American, North American, and Eurasian,
respectively ( fig. 6.2b ). Morrone (2002a) stated that a single biogeographic
scheme for all organisms, to serve as a general reference system, would be
a desirable goal. Based on several panbiogeographic and cladistic biogeo-
graphic papers that have shown that some of the units recognized in tradi-
tionalphytogeographic andzoogeographicsystemsdonotrepresentnatural
units, he presented a general system of biogeographic realms and regions,
intending to incorporate their conclusions. This biogeographic regionaliza-
tion ( fig. 6.2c ) is as follows:
1. Holarctic realm: Europe, Asia north of the Himalayan mountains, northern
Africa, North America (excluding southern Florida), and Greenland. From
a paleogeographic viewpoint, it corresponds to the paleocontinent of Laur-
asia.
1.1. Nearctic region: New World, namely Canada, most of the United
States, and northern Mexico.
1.2. Palearctic region: Old World, namely Eurasia and Africa north of the
Sahara.
2. Holotropical realm: basically the tropical areas of the world, between 30°
south latitude and 30° north latitude, that correspond to the eastern portion
of the Gondwana paleocontinent (Crisci et al. 1993).
2.1. Neotropical region: tropical South America, Central America, south
central Mexico, the West Indies, and southern Florida.
2.2. Afrotropical or Ethiopian region: central Africa, the Arabian peninsula,
Madagascar, and the West Indian Ocean islands.
2.3. Oriental region: India, Himalaya, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and the Pacific islands. Despite the obvious tropical biota