Geographical and environmental representativeness of records of gastropods, pteridophytes and aquatic plants in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico

Abstract

Field records have been used to analyze a wide variety of ecological and evolutionary questions. The increasing availability field records databases collecting have promoted its use to identifying potential sites where the species can be found and areas of high species richness. However, such records have been obtained in different years, collectors, study objectives, sampling designs; suggesting that these data are biased in sampling basic assumptions. This study analyzed randomness, independence and representativeness assumptions in the records of the species of gastropods, pteridophytes and aquatic plants of Tamaulipas state. Results suggest that records frequency was higher closer to urban areas than expected at random. In contrast, there were fewer records in areas over 7 km off roads that randomly expected. For the 3 groups of species, we reported significant differences on temperature and vegetal cover percentage between locations observed and random localities in the state. Finally, field records of the 3 groups presented an aggregated spatial arrangement. The discussion highlights the statistical risks of using this type of records to generate geographic distribution models, such as the randomness of the samples, the spatial independence and biased representativeness. All Rights Reserved (C) 2015 Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Instituto de Biologia.