Abstract
Increasing evidence for the effects of Holocene history on modern biotic communities suggests that current explanations of community patterns and conservation strategies require revisiting. Here we focused on Central European rich fens that are at high risk among mire habitats because of their relatively low environmental stability, and hence sensitivity to successional shifts. At each of 57 study sites, inventory of specialist species of bryophytes, vascular plants and land snails, measurements of local environmental conditions, area, and radiocarbon dating were conducted. We used Moran’s I spatial autocorrelation, multiple linear regression models, MDS, db-RDA, and null models to identify drivers of species richness and occurrence. We tested the importance of site age and historical metacommunity dynamics expressed by regional age of the habitat for the diversity of three taxonomic groups of fen organisms differing in dispersal and life history strategies. The richness of specialist species was affected by local environmental conditions and area in all three groups, but the effect of regional age was significant and positive for vascular plants and snails, once the effect of fen area was set as a covariable. We identified 11 species significantly associated with ancient fens independently of site area and pH effects; this group includes species currently considered to be umbrella species in European habitat conservation (the moss Hamatocaulis vernicosus and the snail Vertigo geyeri). The effect of fen age per se on the communities of specialists calls for the incorporation of age into conservation schemes. Restoration or de novo construction of peat-forming fens cannot compensate for a loss of ancient fens.
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Data availability
The lists of fen specialist species for individual sites are available in Online Resource 3. The environmental variables, fen areas, and radiocarbon dates are available in Online Resource 4. The list of fen specialist species and their pH ranges in Central Europe are available in Online Resource 6. Counts of fen specialist species for each taxonomic group at each locality are summarised in Online Resource 7. The names and coordinates of individual sites cannot be made freely available, because that would divulge sensitive information on the location of endangered species and hence compromise nature conservation goals. For the majority of species, such assignment is possible using the databases of Pladias (https://pladias.ibot.cas.cz/) and the European Vegetation Archive (http://euroveg.org).
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Acknowledgements
This study is dedicated to the memory of Anna Koczur, a botanist and conservationist, who supported our research on fens in the Western Carpathians. We are grateful to dozens of our colleagues who joined us during numerous fieldwork trips in the last two decades. Many thanks go especially to Stanislav Němejc for his inestimable help in palaeoecological sampling. Ester Ekrtová, Petr Bureš and Filip Lysák provided useful information on selected localities in the Bohemian-Moravian highlands; Ester further helped us with sampling a peat profile in the Klátov fen. We also thank Milan Chytrý and Milan Valachovič for providing data from vegetation databases and Ilona Knollová for help with data management. The previous version of the manuscript benefited from comments by Hemalatha Kamaraj and three anonymous referees.
Funding
This paper is a major output of a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation (Grant No. GJ19-20530Y; support for TP, EM, MJ, LP, ZP, EŠ). MHá, MHo, PH, PS, VH and RC were supported by the Project No. GA19-01775S. PH was further supported by a long-term research development project of the Czech Academy of Science (RVO 67985939).
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TP, MHá, MHo conceived the ideas. TP, VH, PH, RC, LP, DD, ZH, RH, MJ, VP, ZP, PS, EŠ, TŠ, EM, MHo, MHá conducted the fieldwork and collected the data. LT, MHo, RC, TP analysed the data. TP and MHá led the writing with assistance from MHo, VH and PH. All authors commented on the manuscript.
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Communicated by Robert Cowie.
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Peterka, T., Tichý, L., Horsáková, V. et al. The long history of rich fens supports persistence of plant and snail habitat specialists. Biodivers Conserv 31, 39–57 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02318-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02318-0