Land snail biogeography and endemism in south-eastern Africa: Implications for the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany biodiversity hotspot

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0248040
• Publication Date: 2021-03-04T18:37:27Z
• Authors: Sandun J. Perera; David G. Herbert; Şerban Procheş; Syd Ramdhani
• Keywords: Endemism; Regionalisation; Biodiversity hotspot; Land snail; Dendrogram

Invertebrates in general have long been underrepresented studies on biodiversity, biogeography and conservation. Boundaries of biodiversity hotspots are often delimited intuitively based floristic endemism seldom empirically tested using actual species distributions, especially invertebrates. Here we analyse the zoogeography terrestrial malacofauna from south-eastern Africa (SEA), proposing first mollusc-based numerical regionalisation for area. We also discuss patterns centres land snail endemism, thence assessing importance delimitation Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany (MPA) hotspot their An incidence matrix compiled relatively well-collected lineages snails slugs (73 taxa twelve genera) 40 a priori operational geographic units was subjected to (a) phenetic agglomerative hierarchical clustering unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic means (UPGMA), (b) parsimony analysis endemicity (PAE) biotic element (BEA). Fulfilling primary objective our study, UPGMA dendrogram provided identified five molluscan SEA, while PAE confirmed six areas supported by BEA. The recovers zoogeographic province similar MPA hotspot, but conspicuous westward extension into Knysna (towards Cape). province, elements as well spatial richness support suggest further extensions resulting greater region (also northward sky islands—Soutpansberg Wolkberg), that noted vertebrates. provides more robustly defined conservation concern, serving local priorities.