MODELING THE BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF LOCAL ENDEMISM IN SOUTH-AFRICAN FYNBOS

The biological attributes, dispersal mode, growth form, and regenerati on strategy were determined for the endemic and non-endemic flora of t he southern Langeberg, Cape Province, South Africa.-Logistic regressio n analysis was used to assess the simultaneous effects and interaction s between these biological attributes on the occurrence of endemism. T he model allowed numerical estimation of the probability that a specie s with a given set of attributes would be endemic.-This approach exten ds a contingency table analysis of the data, which merely indicated th e association between individual biological traits and endemism. Furth ermore, the logistic model allows scope for the analysis of the influe nce of biological traits in determining endemism in other floras, and also tentative prediction of the probability of endemism in species wi th combinations of biological traits not yet observed in the flora of the southern Langeberg.