We studied the relationships among the ascidian fauna of southern New Zealand, Tasmania, and southern Africa, considering main currents and surface water temperature. We constructed a presence/absence matrix of 494 ascidian species from these regions (which were also divided into provinces) for 28 biogeographical worldwide regions using published records. Biogeographical areas were classified using cluster analysis combined with non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination. The region classification separated Vema Seamount because of the low number of citations and the high number of ascidian endemism owing to an island effect. The Tasmanian, southern African and southern New Zealand regions formed separate groups. The ascidian fauna was dominated by endemic species in southern New Zealand (43%) and southern Africa (45%), whereas southern Australian species dominated the Tasmanian fauna (41%). © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2008.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Biological Sciences
Research Group:	Evolutionary Biology
Research Field:	Biogeography and Phylogeography
Objective Division:	Environment
Objective Group:	Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity
Objective Field:	Marine Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity
UTAS Author:	Primo, C (Dr Carmen Primo Perez)
ID Code:	57505
Year Published:	2008
Web of Science® Times Cited:	4
Deposited By:	NC Marine Conservation and Resource Sustainability
Deposited On:	2009-07-22
Last Modified:	2014-12-18
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