Relics of the Europe's warm past: Phylogeography of the Aesculapian snake

0356670 - ÚŽFG 2011 RIV US eng J - Journal Article
Musilová, Radka - Zavadil, V. - Marková, Silvia - Kotlík, Petr
Relics of the Europe's warm past: Phylogeography of the Aesculapian snake.
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. Roč. 57, - (2010), s. 1245-1252. ISSN 1055-7903. E-ISSN 1095-9513
R&D Projects: GA MŠMT LC06073
Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z50450515
Keywords : Elaphe longissima * Holocene climatic optimum * Isolated populations
Subject RIV: EB - Genetics ; Molecular Biology
Impact factor: 3.889, year: 2010

Understanding how species responded to past climate change can provide information about how they may respond to the current global warming. The present-day distribution of the Aesculapian snake Zamenis longissimus in the southern half of Europe is a remnant of much wider range during the Holocene climatic optimum, approximately 5,000-8,000 years ago, when populations occurred as far north as Denmark. The northern populations went extinct as the climate cooled, and presently the species is extinct from all central Europe, except a few relic populations in Germany and the Czech Republic. The phylogenetic analyses identified two major clades that expanded from their respective western and eastern refugia after the last glacial maximum. Snakes from the relic populations carried the Eastern clade, showing that it was the snakes from the Balkan refugium that occupied the central and northern Europe during the Holocene climatic optimum. If, as these results suggest, some populations responded to the mid-Holocene global warming by shifting their ranges further north than other populations of the same species, knowing what populations were able to expand in different species may provide information about what populations will be important for a species' ability to cope with the current global warming.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0195130