New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research abstracts

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Zoogeography of the southern New Zealand, Tasmanian and southern African ascidian fauna

Carmen Primo
Elsa Vázquez

Departamento Ecoloxía e Bioloxía Animal
Facultade de Ciencias do Mar
Universidade de Vigo
36310 Vigo, Spain
email: carprimo@uvigo.es

Abstract We studied the relationships among the ascidian fauna of southern New Zealand, Tasmania, and southern Africa, considering main currents and surface water temperature. We constructed a presence/absence matrix of 494 ascidian species from these regions (which were also divided into provinces) for 28 biogeographical worldwide regions using published records. Biogeographical areas were classified using cluster analysis combined with non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination. The region classification separated Vema Seamount because of the low number of citations and the high number of ascidian endemism owing to an island effect. The Tasmanian, southern African and southern New Zealand regions formed separate groups. The ascidian fauna was dominated by endemic species in southern New Zealand (43%) and southern Africa (45%), whereas southern Australian species dominated the Tasmanian fauna (41%).

Keywords biogeographical regions; Ascidiacea; Tunicata; cluster analysis

New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, 2008, Vol. 42: 233–256
0028–8330/08/4202–0233     © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2008
M06084; Online publication date 16 June 2008
Received 29 December 2006; accepted 19 May 2008

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