Introduction. Following on from work on the European bryophyte Red List, the taxonomically and nomenclaturally updated spreadsheets used for that project have been expanded into a new checklist for the bryophytes of Europe. Methods. A steering group of ten European bryologists was convened, and over the course of a year, the spreadsheets were compared with previous European checklists, and all changes noted. Recent literature was searched extensively. A taxonomic system was agreed, and the advice and expertise of many European bryologists sought. Key results. A new European checklist of bryophytes, comprising hornworts, liverworts and mosses, is presented. Fifteen new combinations are proposed. Conclusions. This checklist provides a snapshot of the current European bryophyte flora in 2019. It will already be out-of-date on publication, and further research, particularly molecular work, can be expected to result in many more changes over the next few years.

International audienc

The extent to which species can balance out the loss of suitable habitats due to climate warming by shifting their ranges is an area of controversy. Here, we assess whether highly efficient wind-dispersed organisms like bryophytes can keep-up with projected shifts in their areas of suitable climate. Using a hybrid statistical-mechanistic approach accounting for spatial and temporal variations in both climatic and wind conditions, we simulate future migrations across Europe for 40 bryophyte species until 2050. The median ratios between predicted range loss vs expansion by 2050 across species and climate change scenarios range from 1.6 to 3.3 when only shifts in climatic suitability were considered, but increase to 34.7–96.8 when species dispersal abilities are added to our models. This highlights the importance of accounting for dispersal restrictions when projecting future distribution ranges and suggests that even highly dispersive organisms like bryophytes are not equipped to fully track the rates of ongoing climate change in the course of the next decades.

Bryophytes are a group of early land plants, whose specific ecophysiological and biological features, including poikilohydry, sensitivity to moderately high temperature and high dispersal ability, make them ideal candidates for investigating the impact of climate changes. Employing a combined approach of species distribution modelling (SDM) and molecular phylogeography in the temperate moss Homalothecium sericeum, we explore the significance of the Mediterranean refugia, contrasting the southern and northern refugia hypotheses, determine the extent to which recolonization of previously glaciated areas has been facilitated by the high dispersal ability of the species and make predictions on the extent to which it will be impacted by ongoing climate change. The Mediterranean areas exhibit the highest nucleotidic diversities and host a mixture of ancestral, endemic and more recently derived haplotypes. Extra-Mediterranean areas exhibit low genetic diversities and Euro-Siberian populations display a significant signal of expansion that is identified to be of Euro-Siberian origin, pointing to the northern refugia hypothesis. The SDMs predict a global net increase in range size owing to ongoing climate change, but substantial range reductions in southern areas. Presence of a significant phylogeographical signal at different spatial scales suggests, however, that dispersal limitations might constitute, as opposed to the traditional view of spore-producing plants as efficient dispersers, a constraint for migration. This casts doubts about the ability of the species to face the massive extinctions predicted in the southern areas, threatening their status of reservoir of genetic diversity.

As a result of several fi eld trips made into the Komovi Mts, 200 bryophyte taxa (43 liverworts and 157 mosses) were collected. Four species are reported for the fi rst time in the country. Among the species recorded, six are red-listed in Europe.

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Bryophytes are typically seen as extremely efficient dispersers. Experimental evidence suggests that efficient short‐distance dispersal coupled with random long‐distance dispersal (LDD) leads to an inverse isolation effect. Under the latter, a higher genetic diversity of colonizing propagules is expected with increasing isolation, counteracting differentiation beyond the range of short‐distance dispersal. This expectation is tested from a review of evidence on spatial genetic structure and analyses of isolation‐by‐distance (IBD) at different scales. A decay of the IBD signal, characterized by non‐significant slopes between kinship coefficients and geographic distance was observed beyond 100 m. A second slope shift was observed at distances larger than 1 km, with a proportion of significant slopes in more than one third of the datasets. The decay of the IBD signal beyond 100 m, which reflects efficient LDD, is consistent with the inverse isolation hypothesis. Persistence of a significant IBD signal at medium ranges in one third of the analysed cases suggests, however, that the inverse isolation effect is not a rule in bryophyte spore dispersal. Furthermore, the higher proportion of significant IBD patterns observed at scales over 100 km likely marks the limits of regional dispersal, beyond which an increasingly smaller proportion of spores travel. Synthesis. We discuss the differences between experimental and genetic estimates of spore dispersal and conclude that geographic distance remains a significant proxy of spore colonization rates, with major consequences for our understanding of actual migration capacities in bryophytes, and hence, our capacity to model range shifts in a changing world.

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