European glacial relict snails and plants: environmental context of their modern refugial occurrence in southern Siberia

0448033 - BÚ 2016 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Horsák, M. - Chytrý, M. - Hájková, Petra - Hájek, M. - Danihelka, Jiří - Horsáková, V. - Ermakov, N. - German, D. A. - Kočí, M. - Lustyk, P. - Nekola, J. C. - Preislerová, Z. - Valachovič, M.
European glacial relict snails and plants: environmental context of their modern refugial occurrence in southern Siberia.
Boreas. Roč. 44, č. 4 (2015), s. 638-657. ISSN 0300-9483. E-ISSN 1502-3885
Institutional support: RVO:67985939
Keywords : glacial relicts * snails * vascular plants
Subject RIV: EF - Botanics
Impact factor: 2.386, year: 2015

Knowledge of present-day communities and ecosystems resembling those reconstructed from the fossil record can help improve our understanding of historical distribution patterns and species composition of past communities. Here, we use a unique data set of 570 plots explored for vascular plant and 315 for land-snail assemblages located along a 650-km-long transect running across a steep climatic gradient in the Russian Altai Mountains and their foothills in southern Siberia. We analysed climatic and habitat requirements of modern populations for eight land-snail and 16 vascular plant species that are considered characteristic of the full-glacial environment of central Europe based on (i) fossil evidence from loess deposits (snails) or (ii) refugial patterns of their modern distributions (plants). The analysis yielded consistent predictions of the full-glacial central European climate derived from both snail and plant populations. Analysis of climatic conditions also indicated that distributional shifts of the studied species during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition were closely related to their climatic tolerances. Our results suggest that the habitat requirements of southern Siberian populations can provide realistic insights into the reconstruction of Eurasian, especially central European, glacial environments. Data obtained from modern populations also highlight the importance of wet habitats as refugia in the generally dry full-glacial landscape.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0249778