Biogeographical patterns in vertebrate assemblages of the Czech Republic: regional division in the context of species' distributions in Europe

Abstract

This study attempts to explore biogeographical patterns in vertebrate assemblages of the Czech Republic and to delineate faunal biogeographical regions of the country. We focused on native terrestrial species and first explored main gradients in the composition of their assemblages. The first gradient revealed by Principal Coordinate Analysis was best correlated with climatic variables, whereas the second gradient can be ascribed rather to longitude and to the associated habitat change. Using the spatially constrained clustering, the Czech Republic was divided into five cohesive regions and species above-average associated with these regions showed distinct distributions within the European continent. Delineated regions also significantly differed at least in three considered environmental variables. We provided clear evidence that species distribution data gathered by national mapping support main biogeographical patterns suggested by previously published expert-based classifications of the country. We also demonstrated that the fauna of the Czech Republic shows a biogeographical pattern very similar to that showed by natural habitats defined in terms of plant communities. This indicates that both fauna and flora of the Czech Republic yield to the same environmental forces and biogeographical processes such as spreading of faunistic and floristic elements from the adjacent Carpathian Mountains and the Pannonian Basin.