About Us
News
Announcement
Research
Conservation & Horticulture
Public Education
Graduate Study
Scientist
International Cooperation
Resources
Annual Reports
Publications & Papers
Visit XTBG
Societies
XTBG Seminar
Open Positions
4th XSBN Symposium
CAS-SEABRI
PFS-Tropical Asia
Links
 
   Location:Home > Research > Research Progress
Analysis of Sundaland biogeography in PNAS
Author: Ferry Slik
ArticleSource:
Update time: 2011-07-13
Close
Text Size: A A A
Print

The marked biogeographic difference between western (Malay Peninsula and Sumatra) and eastern (Borneo) Sundaland is surprising given the long time that these areas have formed a single landmass. A dispersal barrier in the form of a dry savanna corridor during glacial maxima has been proposed to explain this disparity. However, the short duration of these dry savanna conditions make it an unlikely sole cause for the biogeographic pattern. An additional explanation might be related to the coarse sandy soils of central Sundaland.

  To test these two nonexclusive hypotheses,Prof. Ferry Slik of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) and his colleagues performed a floristic cluster analysis based on 111 tree inventories from Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo. The researchers then identified the indicator genera for clusters that crossed the central Sundaland biogeographic boundary and those that did not cross and tested whether drought and coarse-soil tolerance of the indicator genera differed between them.

The major findings indicate that the marked biogeographic difference between western (Malay Peninsula and Sumatra) and eastern (Borneo) Sundaland was more related to plant species with coarse-soil tolerance rather than drought tolerance, suggesting that exposed sandy sea-bed soils acted as the major dispersal barrier in central Sundaland, not a savanna corridor. This finding makes it clear that proposed biogeographic explanations for plant and animal distributions within Sundaland, including possible migration routes for early humans, need to be reevaluated.

 The research entitled “Soils on exposed Sunda Shelf shaped biogeographic patterns in the equatorial forests of Southeast Asia” has been published online in the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America). doi:10.1073/pnas.1103353108

Abstract http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/08/1103353108.abstract

  Appendix Download
Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
Copyright XTBG 2005-2014 Powered by XTBG Information Center