10 - The West Indies and Middle America: Contrasting Origins and Diversity

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a comparative study of the herpetofaunas of the West Indies and Middle America. Both of these regions received many lineages of their biota from the same source areas—North America and South America, but their compositions are extremely different. Thus, the biogeography of these two areas provides a fascinating challenge for retrodiction. Middle America is defined as the Central American countries and southeastern Mexico east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The West Indies excludes the Netherlands Antilles, and the continental islands of Trinidad and Tobago. A major problem in dealing with the biogeography of the herpetofaunas of Middle America and the West Indies is a lack of evidence defining monophyletic lineages, and the absence of phylogenetic analyses of taxa within those lineages. The two largest genera, Anolis and Eleutherodactylus , inhabiting both regions have been subjected to at least partial analyses. Among lizards, the gekkonid genus Sphaerodactylus occurs on the mainland in Middle and South America, but is especially diverse in the West Indies.