The living heart: climate gradients predict desert mountain endemism

Mountain regions are centres of biodiversity endemism at a global scale but the role of arid- zone mountain ranges in shaping biodiversity patterns is poorly understood. Focusing on three guilds of taxa from a desert upland refugium in Australia, we sought to determine: 1) the relative extent to which climate, terrain or geological substrate predict endemism, and 2) whether patterns of endemism are complimentary across broad taxonomic guilds. We mapped regional endemism for plants, land snails and vertebrates using combined Species Distribution Models (SDMs) for all endemic taxa (n=82). We then modelled predictors of endemism using Generalised Additive Models (GAMs) and geology, terrain and climate variables. We tested for the presence of inter- and intraguild hotspots of endemism. Many individual plant and land snail taxa were tightly linked with geology, corresponding to small distributions. Conversely, most vertebrate taxa were not constrained to specific geological substrates and oc...