Biogeographic regions of North American mammals based on endemism

Since the 19th century, two regions have been recognized for North American mammals, which overlap in Mexico. The Nearctic region corresponds to the northern areas and the Neotropical region to the southern ones. There are no recent regionalizations for these regions under the criterion of endemism. We integrate herein two methods to regionalize North America, using species distribution models of mammals: Endemicity Analysis (EA) and Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity (PAE). EA was used to obtain areas of endemism and PAE to hierarchize them. We found 76 consensus areas from 329 sets, classified in 146 cladograms, and the strict consensus cladogram shows a basal polytomy with 14 areas and 16 clades. The final regionalization recognizes two regions (Nearctic and Neotropical) and a transition zone (Mexican Transition Zone), six subregions (Canadian, Alleghanian, Californian-Rocky Mountain, Pacific Central America, Mexican Gulf-Central America and Central America), two dominions (Californian...