ABSTRACT
Molluscan biodiversity in the Georgian Subprovince Extending from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, south to Palm Beach County, Florida, the Georgian Subprovince encompasses the area that Woodward (1856) referred to as the Carolinian subdivision of the Transatlantic Province and that Valentine (1973) called the Carolinian Province. Although it contains all of the classic provincial index taxa listed in Chapter 2, this eastern U.S. faunal area also exhibits a high level of endemism and can be differentiated from the other Carolinian subprovinces. As a discrete biogeographical entity, the Georgian Subprovince (including the Palm Beach Provinciatone) can be dened by the percentages of endemism of the 10 key index taxa. Based on the relationship
T n N
T= >( ),100 50
these are as follows:
Modulidae (t1), t = 100, with N = 4, n = 4 Turbinellidae (t2), t = 0, with N = 1, n = 0 (absent in the Georgian Subprovince) Conidae (t3), t = 29, with N = 17, n = 5 Conilithidae (t4), t = 17, with N = 6, n = 1 Muricinae (t5), t = 21, with N = 14, n = 3 Fasciolariinae (t6), t = 33, with N = 3, n = 1 Lyriinae (t7), t = 0, with N = 0, n = 0 (absent in the Georgian Subprovince) Olivinae (t8), t = 33, with N = 3, n = 1 Cancellariinae (t9), t = 0, with N = 3, n = 0 Plesiotritoninae (t10), t = 50, with N = 2, n = 1
The raw data for these analyses are taken from the species lists shown in Appendix 1. The subprovincial combined index, incorporating the endemicity of these 10 families and subfamilies and dened by the relationship
S tn
S n
= > =
∑ 10 25 1
,
yields the index quantity S = 30.2. This high level of subprovincial endemism (with S > 25) demonstrates that the Georgian Subprovince is a differentiable biogeographic entity.
