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A delineation of Nuclear Middle America biogeographical provinces based on river basin faunistic similarities

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Abstract

The biogeographical patterns of the obligate freshwater fishes of Nuclear Middle America, a region that expands from southern Guatemala to northern Nicaragua, are described herein. Historically, three broad ichthyological provinces have been assigned to Nuclear Middle America: the Usumacinta, and the San Juan in the Atlantic slope and the Chiapas-Nicaragüense in the Pacific slope. With the use of correspondence analysis and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean cluster analysis of a presence/absence matrix of 76 obligate freshwater fishes, we identified four ichthyological provinces in Nuclear Middle America: (1) the Honduras and Guatemala Caribbean Highlands Province, (2) the Honduras and Nicaragua Mosquitia Province, (3) the Chiapas-El Salvador-Nacaome Province, and (4) the Choluteca and Nicaragua Pacific Province. Differences between provinces in species composition and species turnover between provinces were tested by analysis of similarity, the calculation of beta-diversity indices and an indicator species analysis. We then further characterized each province by identifying the number of endemics and classifying species according to their salinity tolerance. The most striking patterns of Nuclear Middle America freshwater fish distribution are its paucity of primary freshwater fishes and limited numbers of endemics. The four ichthyological provinces are distinct as indicated by the ANOSIM and beta-diversity analysis, although one province showed low beta-diversity values. These results suggest that, despite of the active geological history that characterized the region, there has been limited isolation of species in any given province, and historical drainage connectivity has been high.

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Acknowledgments

Funding for this study was provided by the Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund grant # 51962. The World Wildlife Fund W F Russell E. Train Education for Nature fellowship, and the United States Agency for International Development project (USAID/MIRA). We would especially like to thank Jorge Iván Restrepo, Fredy Membreno and Gunther Suárez from the Instituto Regional para la Biodiversidad and the Instituto Zamorano de Biodiversidad for their timely and altruistic cooperation. Pepe Herrero of project USAID /MIRA provided crucial logistic support for sampling in the north coast of Honduras. We would also like to thank the undergraduate students from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras who helped in the field while collecting samples for this study: Marcela Matamoros, Alejandra Sánchez, Melissa Medina, Jonathan Hernández, Fausto Elvir, and Hermes Vega. The Honduran biologists Héctor Portillo and Juan Carlos Carrasco also volunteered and spent much time in the field with our team. We are also very grateful to Luis Morales from Dirección General de Pesca, and Claudia Carcamo, Ivonne Oviedo and Andrés Alegría from the Instituto de Conservación Forestal for their help in obtaining collection permits in Honduras. Finally, anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged for comments on a draft of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Louisiana State University/Museum of Natural Science, 119 Foster Hall, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803-3216, USA

    Wilfredo A. Matamoros

  2. Departamento de Investigación, Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán, Tegucigalpa, Honduras

    Wilfredo A. Matamoros

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Drive, Box 5018, Hattiesburg, MS, 39406, USA

    Brian R. Kreiser & Jacob F. Schaefer

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  1. Wilfredo A. Matamoros
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  2. Brian R. Kreiser
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  3. Jacob F. Schaefer
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Correspondence to Wilfredo A. Matamoros.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 3.

Table 3 List of obligate freshwater fishes found in 29 Nuclear Middle America river drainages
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Matamoros, W.A., Kreiser, B.R. & Schaefer, J.F. A delineation of Nuclear Middle America biogeographical provinces based on river basin faunistic similarities. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 22, 351–365 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-011-9232-8

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