This interactive web application has been designed to provide an easy-to-use interface to visualize multiscale biogeographical structures of plant species distribution in the south of France. It was developed as part of a research project funded by the French National Research Agency through the Netcost Young Researchers project and by the French Ministry for an Ecological and Solidary Transition.

The first tab presents the dataset used to perform the analysis and the spatial distribution of plant species. The second tab displays a map of the bioregions identified with different methods. Other historical biogeographical delineation, such as the one proposed by Lamarck & De Candolle in 1805, are also available. The third tab presents the specificity of the bioregions and the relationship between them. The results are available at two different scales with grid cells of 5x5 and 10x10 km² and several aggregation methods and similarity metrics have been tested (more details given below).

Two clustering technics have been applied to identify biogeographical regions according to similarities of species composition between grid cells.

• OSLOM is a clustering algorithm designed to detect network communities
• Ward's method is a criterion applied in hierarchical cluster analysis

The (dis)similarity of species composition between grid cells has been measured with the Jaccard and Simpson similarity coefficients.

Lenormand et al. (2019) Biogeographical network analysis of plant species distribution in the Mediterranean region. Ecology & Evolution 9, 237-250.

Maxence Soubeyrand & Maxime Lenormand

Source code available here

Coded under License GPLv3