The Andes of Colombia and Ecuador as a barrier to fern and lycophyte species from Mesoamerica

We compiled a list of the fern and lycophyte species that occur in Mesoamerica and extend into Colombia and Ecuador where they are restricted to the western side of the Andes; that is, they only occur west of the crest of the easternmost cordillera and are absent from that cordillera’s eastern slope and in adjacent Amazonia. We found 130 species with this Mesoamerican and west-of-the-eastern-cordillera distribution. Those 130 species constitute 7% of the total 1805 fern and lycophyte species that have been recorded west of the crest of the easternmost cordillera in Colombia and Ecuador. All 130 species had elevation ranges with midpoints lying in low (0–900 m) or middle (900–3000 m) elevations, and none were above 3000 m. This suggests the cordilleras have acted as elevational barriers. We also investigated the blockage of these 130 species by each of the Andean cordilleras. We found that 74 (57%) of the 130 species were limited eastward by the western cordillera, 15 (11%) by the centra..., , , # The Andes of Colombia and Ecuador as a barrier to fern and lycophyte species from Mesoamerica

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.79cnp5j3v](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.79cnp5j3v)

In this repository are the zipped shapefiles, custom R-script and species lists related to Morris & Moran 2024. 

available files:

•       Zipped shapefiles for Regions A, B, and C of Colombia and Ecuador

•       R script used to calculate the total number of fern and lycophyte species in Regions A, B, and C

•       Cleaned list of species present in Regions A, B, and C of Colombia and Ecuador as a .csv

## Description

**total_species_calculation_Morris__Moran_2024.R**

* The R script is linked to the shapefiles.
* The R script takes a downloaded occurrence dataset from [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/) , cleans the records, and subsets the occurrences using the shapefiles.
* The working directory in R should contain the shapefiles for the script to work properly.  

**Polygons A, B, C, and ABC**

* Each...