Derivation of the freshwater fish fauna of Central America revisited: Myers's hypothesis in the twenty-first century

摘要: Although attempts to understand Central American freshwater fish provincialism date the 1960s, early efforts lacked wealth of distributional data now available. Biogeographic work on fishes has been largely descriptive and regional, a broader synthesis. Here we use parsimony analysis endemicity (PAE) elucidate faunistic relationships between major drainages delineate areas endemism. We then perform Brooks (BPA) resulting areas. The PAE recovered primary division four Pacific six Atlantic slope In contrast, BPA two geographic clades, one sharing history with North America other South America. Fish diversity is uneven across America, greater in adjacent more species-rich regions northern nuclear paucity ostariophysan such as catfishes characins (groups that dominate regions) contrasts high species richness poeciliids cichlids. Results this study are consistent Myer’s hypothesis cichlids dispersed Northern or Nuclear Middle Cenozoic, long before Plio-Pleistocene rise Isthmus Panama. © Willi Hennig Society 2014.