FAMILY DISTRIBUTIONS IN THE LILIIFLORAE AND THEIR BIOGEOGRAPHICAL IMPLICATIONS

The Liliiflorae sensu Dahlgren, Clifford & Yeo (1985) represent ninety -one tribes in between forty-eight and fifty-six families and five ord ers worldwide, many of which are of restricted distribution, making th em an ideal subject for biogeographic study. In order to evaluate the Liliiflorae's usefulness as phytogeographic indicators, Ecogeographic Pattern comparisons (EP) and Parsimony Area of Endemicity (PAE) analys es were applied to Takhtajan's (1969) biogeographic regions, using the Liliiflorae as characters. These procedures involved agglomerative cl ustering, multi-dimensional scaling and minimum spanning tree and pars imony analyses of the regions. The results indicate that the Liliiflor ae have several centres of diversity: N and E Australia, the Cape and Madagascar and the SE Asian and Indian regions. Africa and India showe d affinities with northern regions, whereas the southern Oceanian and Australasian regions were associated more with South America, although there were also links to Asia through the spread of both Laurasian an d Gondwanan lily taxa into adjacent regions. The Liliiflorae show clea r northern and southern taxon associations which may prove useful in t he future for the re-evaluation of their past histories, as their trad itional phylogenetic relationships are redefined radically by ongoing molecular systematic research.