Biogeography of the West Indies: A complex scenario for species radiations in terrestrial and aquatic habitats

Abstract

Studies of the biogeography of the West Indies are numerous but not all taxonomic groups have received the same attention. Many of the contributions to this field have historically focused on terrestrial vertebrates from a perspective closely linked to the classical theory of island biogeography. However, some recent works have questioned whether some of the assumptions of this theory are too simplistic. In this review, we compiled information about the West Indies biogeography based on an extensive and rigorous literature search. While we offer some background of the main hypotheses that explain the origin of the Caribbean biota, our main purpose here is to highlight divergent diversification patterns observed in terrestrial versus aquatic groups of the West Indian biota and also to shed light on the unbalanced number of studies covering the biogeography of these groups of organisms. We use an objective method to compile existing information in the field and produce a rigorous literature review. Our results show that most of the relevant literature in the field is related to the study of terrestrial organisms (mainly vertebrates) and only a small portion covers aquatic groups. Specifically, livebearing fishes show interesting deviations from the species-area relationship predicted by classical island biogeography theory. We found that species richness on the Greater Antilles is positively correlated with island size but also with the presence of elevations showing that not only island area but also mountainous relief may be an important factor determining the number of freshwater species in the Greater Antilles. Our findings shed light on mechanisms that may differently drive speciation in aquatic versus terrestrial environments suggesting that ecological opportunity could outweigh the importance of island size in speciation. Investigations into freshwater fishes of the West Indies offer a promising avenue for understanding origins and subsequent diversification of the Caribbean biota.

Keywords: West Indies; biogeography; island; livebearing fishes.

FIGURE 1

Flow chart of search results and selection process following Dougherty and Shuker (2015). Summary table of studies of the biogeography of the West Indies is available in the Dryad Digital Repository (available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.0k6djh9zv)

FIGURE 2

Map of the Caribbean basin showing the three main archipelagoes with corresponding geologic origins that form the West Indies. N.A: North America, C.A: Continental Central America, S.A.: South America. (Scale bar at the bottom represents 200 km)

FIGURE 3

Map of the West Indies showing the number of endemic species by genera in the Greater Antilles. Hispaniola shows the largest radiation since a single lineage (Limia) has radiated in 19 known species. Puerto Rico has a very limited freshwater fauna with no endemic species of poeciliids. (Scale bar at the bottom represents 200 km)

FIGURE 4

Diversification of Anolis lizards and livebearing fishes of the genus Limia in the Greater Antilles. The ln of the number of species of Anolis is strongly correlated with ln island area (r = 0.96), but not the ln of the number of species of Limia with ln island area (r = 0.35). 1: Puerto Rico, 2: Jamaica, 3: Hispaniola, 4: Cuba. Data from Algar and Mahler (2016) and Furness et al. (2016)