Data from: 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 and Rocky Mountain) and 23 provinces. Our analysis show that North America is probably more complex than previously assumed.

自19世纪以来，学界已依据北美哺乳动物类群划分出两大地理区，二者在墨西哥境内存在重叠分布。新北区（Nearctic）对应北美北部区域，新热带区（Neotropical）则对应南部区域。目前尚无基于特有性标准的上述两大地理区最新区划方案。本文基于哺乳动物物种分布模型，整合两种区划方法开展北美地理区划：特有性分析（Endemicity Analysis, EA）与特有性简约分析（Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity, PAE）。其中EA用于获取特有性分布区，PAE用于对这些分布区进行层级划分。本研究从329组数据集中共得到76个共识分布区，这些分布区被归入146张支序图中；严格合意支序图显示存在一处基部多歧分支，包含14个分布区与16个演化支。最终区划方案确认了两大地理区（新北区与新热带区）及一处过渡带（墨西哥过渡带）、六个亚区（加拿大亚区、阿勒格尼亚区、加利福尼亚-落基山亚区、中美洲太平洋亚区、墨西哥湾-中美洲亚区与中美洲亚区）、两个域（加利福尼亚域与落基山域）以及23个省。本研究分析结果表明，北美地区的生物地理格局可能比此前学界所设想的更为复杂。