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Do soil and climate properties drive biogeography of the Australian proteaceae?

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Abstract

Aims

The Proteaceae are a diverse family of approximately 80 genera and 1700 species with a mostly southern-hemisphere distribution. While distributional patterns of various subsets of the Proteaceae have been studied, no quantitative continental-scale study of species-level spatial biodiversity patterns of the Australian Proteaceae has been conducted. The aim of this study is to identify and examine patterns of distribution, diversity and endemism for the Proteaceae (at family, genera and species levels) of continental Australia and to investigate the environmental drivers for the observed patterns.

Methods

Using 151,899 herbarium records for 1179 Australian Proteaceae species, we investigate taxon richness, endemism, and compositional turnover along with climatic and soil correlates.

Results

Species richness and endemism was highest in the Southwest phytogeographical region, as well as the Atherton and Southeastern subregions. Genus richness was highest in the Northeastern and Atherton subregions. Highest species turnover occured in the Southwestern region and the Southeastern subregion while lowest species turnover occured in the Northern, Northern Desert and Eremaean regions. Over the entire continent, soil geochemistry and climate explain 37% of the variation in species turnover; however, in areas of high species richness, they account for >75% of the variation in species turnover.

Conclusions

These results suggest that the biogeographic patterns of the Proteaceae are impacted by climate and soils, where Proteaceae specialization has filled novel environmental niches associated with low nutrient and low water availability soils, particularly in southwestern Australia.

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Acknowledgements

This work was part of EP’s participation in a Summer Student program at CSIRO which was sponsored by the Grains Research Development Corporation (GRDC) and Bayer CropScience. This manuscript includes work done by JTM while serving at the National Science Foundation. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation or the United States Government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Collections Australia, CSIRO National Facilities and Collections, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Emily Prentice, Nunzio Knerr & Alexander N. Schmidt-Lebuhn

  2. Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria, Corpoica, La Libertad, km 17 Vía, Puerto López, Meta, Colombia

    Carlos E. González-Orozco

  3. CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1700, Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia

    Elisabeth N. Bui

  4. Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia

    Shawn Laffan

  5. Office of International Science and Engineering, National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, 22230, USA

    Joseph T. Miller

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  1. Emily Prentice
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  2. Nunzio Knerr
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Correspondence to Joseph T. Miller.

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Responsible Editor: François Teste.

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Supplementary Figure 1

Diversity metrics (SR left and CWE right) for Adenanthos, Conospermum, Isopogon, Petrophile, Synaphea and Macadamia mapped using 100x100km grid cells. (PDF 1172 kb)

Supplementary Figure 2

Phytogeographic regions of Hakea/Grevilia, Persoonia and Banksia species based on WPGMA clustering of Simpson’s ßsim. The color of the map regions correspond to color regions on the dendrograms. (PDF 349 kb)

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Prentice, E., Knerr, N., Schmidt-Lebuhn, A.N. et al. Do soil and climate properties drive biogeography of the Australian proteaceae?. Plant Soil 417, 317–329 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3261-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-017-3261-6

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