Format: ORAL

Israel Borokini1, Brent Mishler2, Shawn Laffan3

1 Montana State University, Bozeman, USA 2 University of California, Berkeley, USA 3 University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

The African continent is the second most biologically diverse continent on earth, after South America, harboring a vast richness of animals and over 70,000 known plant species. The African savanna is the richest grassland on earth and the Guineo-Congolian Forest biome is the worlds second largest tropical rainforest and carbon sink (after the Amazon Basin). Also, eight of the worlds 36 biodiversity hotspots are found on the continent. The unprecedented levels of floristic diversity on the continent indicates that several factors, including ecological, biogeographical, and evolutionary drivers, play important roles. Because of these important historical factors, diversity assessments based on species counts alone cannot reliably describe biodiversity patterns and mechanisms responsible for generating and maintaining them. We conducted spatial phylogenetic analysis of the African vascular plants, leveraging recently accessible georeferenced occurrences and a corresponding time-calibrated phylogeny, using Biodiverse software (https://shawnlaffan.github.io/biodiverse/), to identify areas of significant concentrations of phylogenetic diversity (PD), relative phylogenetic diversity (RPD), phylogenetic endemism (PE), and phylogenetic turnover. We also conducted a categorical analysis of neo- and paleo-endemism (CANAPE). Spatial data for native African vascular flora and a corresponding phylogeny were accessed from open-source databases and published papers. Areas of significant phylodiversity in PD, PE, and RPD were identified using a spatial randomization test. The resulting patterns were compared with climate data to infer biodiversity drivers. We also looked at floristic regions of the continent using a range-weighted version of phyloturnover to evaluate previously published regionalizations. Maps of significant phylodiversity were overlaid on a map of Africas protected areas to evaluate the congruence of habitat protection and biodiversity patterns. Conservation priorities are given based on these results.