SREL Reprint #1887

Towards a cladistic biogeography of the Caribbean

Roderic D. M. Page1 and Charles Lydeard2

1Biogeography and Conservation Laboratory, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK
2University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, Drawer E, Aiken, South Carolina 29802, USA

Introduction: The Caribbean has played a prominent role in the biogeographic literature of the last two decades, partly as a consequence of Rosen's (1975) application of track analysis (Croizat, 1958: 1964) to numerous distribution patterns in the region. Rosen's goal (1975: 432) was to "reduce Caribbean distributions to the smallest number of vicariant patterns and to compare these with theories of the historical geology of the region". A decade later Rosen (1985) emphasized the geological and biotic complexity of the Caribbean and presented a series of area cladograms abstracted from geological reconstructions for different periods in time from midCenozoic to the present. He concluded (1985: 657) that unravelling this complexity will require a "stupendous multidisciplinary effort". At the heart of this effort will be cladograms for Caribbean taxa, the supply of which is the primary limiting factor for cladistic biogeographic analysis.
The increasing availability of molecular data sets for Caribbean taxa and their relatives promises to provide a rich source of taxon cladograms for biogeographers. However, some molecular systematists have eschewed cladistic biogeographic analysis in favour of traditional, narrative dispersal accounts based on particular geological models. While those familiar with the cladistic biogeographic literature may regard this paper as another exercise in "arm-chair" biogeography that contributes no new data, in our opinion many of the people most likely to contribute the relevant data (namely molecular systematists) have not appreciated the implications of the biogeographic literature of the last 15 years. This concern motivates our critique.

SREL Reprint #1887

Page, R.D.M. and C. Lydeard. 1994. Towards a cladistic biogeography of the Caribbean. Cladistics 10:21-41. 

This information was provided by the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (srel.uga.edu).