A biogeographical regionalisation of Australian Acacia species

Aim: To develop a biogeographical regionalization of Australian Acacia species and to investigate their environmental correlates. Location: Australia. Methods: We used a previously published framework for delineating biogeographical regions. We calculated species turnover patterns of 1020 Australian Acacia species with distributions estimated from 171,758 georeferenced herbarium records aggregated to 100 km × 100 km cells (868 across Australia). An agglomerative cluster analysis using a matrix of pairwise Simpson's beta (βsim) dissimilarity values was applied. Eleven environmental variables at the same resolution as the aggregated herbarium records were used to explore the correlates of the βsim patterns using a non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) analysis. We also used an ANOVA to test the significance of the environmental changes between each pair of biogeographical regions. Results: Five major Acacia biogeographical regions were proposed. These bioregions were broadly similar ...