Background: Tree species represent 20% of the vascular plant species worldwide and they play a crucial role in the global functioning of the biosphere. The Mediterranean Basin is one of the 36 world biodiversity hotspots, and it is estimated that forests covered 82% of the landscape before the first human impacts, thousands of years ago. However, the spatial distribution of the Mediterranean biodiversity is still imperfectly known, and a focus on tree species constitutes a key issue for understanding forest functioning and develop conservation strategies. Methods: We provide the first comprehensive checklist of all native tree taxa (species and subspecies) present in the Mediterranean-European region (from Portugal to Cyprus). We identified some cases of woody species difficult to categorize as trees that we further called "cryptic trees". We collected the occurrences of tree taxa by "administrative regions", i.e. country or large island, and by biogeographical provinces. We studied the species-area relationship, and evaluated the conservation issues for threatened taxa following IUCN criteria. Results: We identified 245 tree taxa that included 210 species and 35 subspecies, belonging to 33 families and 64 genera. It included 46 endemic tree taxa (30 species and 16 subspecies), mainly distributed within a single biogeographical unit. The countries with the highest tree richness are Greece (146 taxa), Italy (133), Albania (122), Spain (155), Macedonia (116), and Croatia (110). The species-area relationship clearly discriminated the richest central-eastern (Balkans) and northern (Alpine and Cevenno-Pyrenean) biogeographical provinces, against the five western provinces in the Iberian Peninsula. We identified 44 unrecognized "cryptic trees", representing 21% of the total trees. Among the 245 taxa identified, 19 are considered to be threatened (15 CR + EN + VU) or near threatened (4 NT) by IUCN. Conclusions: The Mediterranean-European region includes an unsuspectedly high number of tree taxa, almost 200 tree taxa more than in the central European region. This tree diversity is not distributed evenly and culminates in the central-eastern part of the Mediterranean region, whereas some large Tyrrhenian islands shelter several narrow endemic tree taxa. Few taxa are recognized as threatened in the IUCN Red list, and the vulnerability of these species is probably underestimated.

A pollen diagram was constructed for the earlyto mid-Holocene transition (ca.

Species of the genus Carpobrotus, or iceplant, are succulent mat-forming perennial herbs often introduced for soil stabilization. They are common in coastal environments and may thus threaten island biodiversity. While their effects are well known on soils, plant communities and associated fauna, the effects of Carpobrotus control on vegetation recovery is poorly documented. The aim of the paper is to describe plant community trajectories after Carpobrotus removal. Location Bagaud: a 58-ha Mediterranean island, southern France. Methods Carpobrotus and its litter were removed in 2011-2012. Follow-up controls of germinations and resprouts were carried out from then on. Plant communities were surveyed every year two years before and seven years after Carpobrotus removal: on two ca. 0.5-ha sites (one coastal and one inland) and in three native plant communities used as potential references. Differences in resprouts, vegetation parameters, Bray-Curtis similarity indices between years were tested. Plant community dynamics was studied through a NMDS and two recovery indices. Results The removal of Carpobrotus and its litter led to the recovery of diverse native plant communities. To prevent Carpobrotus return and ensure success, follow-up controls were necessary for a period of at least seven years, but the amount of work decreased with time. The plant community recovering on the coastal site quickly reached a composition and structure similar to that of noninvaded coastal vegetation, although some slow-growing native species remain under-represented (e.g. Crithmum maritimum and Limonium pseudominutum). The plant community recovering on the inland site was still very different from the surrounding matorral vegetation because of its slow colonization dynamics, particularly in the presence of competitive herbaceous species. Conclusion Both sites now provide diverse native plant communities with a more diversified composition and structure (plant heights, litter, bare ground patches) than the plant communities which used to be associated with Carpobrotus mats.

Trees play a key role in the structure and function of many ecosystems worldwide. In the Mediterranean Basin, forests cover approximately 22% of the total land area hosting a large number of endemics (46 species). Despite its particularities and vulnerability, the biodiversity of Mediterranean trees is not well known at the taxonomic, spatial, functional, and genetic levels required for conservation applications. The WOODIV database fills this gap by providing reliable occurrences, four functional traits (plant height, seed mass, wood density, and specific leaf area), and sequences from three DNA-regions (rbcL, matK, and trnH-psbA), together with modelled occurrences and a phylogeny for all 210 Euro-Mediterranean tree species. We compiled, homogenized, and verified occurrence data from sparse datasets and collated them on an INSPIRE-compliant 10 × 10 km grid. We also gathered functional trait and genetic data, filling existing gaps where possible. The WOODIV database can benefit macroecological studies in the fields of conservation, biogeography, and community ecology.

HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

In the context of global warming, a clear understanding of microrefugia-microsites enabling the survival of species populations outside their main range limits-is crucial.Several studies have identified forcing factors that are thought to favor the existence of microrefugia. However, there is a lack of evidence to conclude whether, and to what extent, the climate encountered within existing microrefugia differs from the surrounding climate. To investigate this, we adopt a "bottom-up" approach, linking marginal disconnected populations to microclimate. We used the southernmost disconnected and abyssal populations of the circumboreal herbaceous plant Oxalis acetosella in Southern France to study whether populations in sites matching the definition of "microrefugia" occur in particularly favorable climatic conditions compared to neighboring control plots located at distances of between 50 to 100 m. Temperatures were recorded in putative microrefugia and in neighboring plots for approximately 2 years to quantify their thermal offsets. Vascular plant inventories were carried out to test whether plant communities also reflect microclimatic offsets. We found that current microclimatic dynamics are genuinely at stake in microrefugia. Microrefugia climates are systematically colder compared to those found in neighboring control plots. This pattern was more noticeable during the summer months. Abyssal populations showed stronger offsets compared to neighboring plots than the putative microrefugia occurring at higher altitudes. Plant communities demonstrate this strong spatial climatic variability, even at such a microscale approach, as species compositions systematically differed between the two plots, with species more adapted to colder and moister conditions in microrefugia compared to the surrounding area.

Aims Aeolian islands form an active volcanic archipelago. By using updated vascular plant checklists for islands and islets, we tested four hypotheses: (i) Island species–area relationship (ISAR) of alien species has lower c‐ and higher z‐values than native species, (ii) islands with active volcanoes have lower species richness than expected for native and alien species, (iii) ISAR of native species shows lower c‐ and higher z‐values than ISARs of Mediterranean land bridge archipelagos and (iv) species richness of smaller islets is independent of area. Location Aeolian Archipelago, Mediterranean Basin. Taxon Vascular plants, identified and named according to the Flora of Italy (Pignatti et al., 2017–2019). Methods Checklists of native and alien plant species were obtained for eight islands and 24 islets. ISARs were fitted by the Arrhenius power function (S=c·Az) and used to test the first two hypotheses. The third hypothesis was tested by comparing ISAR of Aeolian Archipelago to those from other central and eastern Mediterranean archipelagos. The fourth hypothesis was tested by fitting models defining the presence and limit of the small‐island effect. Results The checklists included 894 species—749 native and 145 alien. ISARs fitted well for native and alien species and resulted in typical values of c and z parameters. The first and second hypotheses were supported by model fitting. The third hypothesis was not confirmed by the comparison of the ISAR of the Aeolian Archipelago with other archipelagos. The small‐island effect predicted by the fourth hypothesis was supported using S versus LogA for both native and alien species, while for native species it was supported also using the log transformation of the Arrhenius model. Main conclusions We reported a first comprehensive analysis of plant species richness in the unique Aeolian Archipelago, verifying typical ISARs, no peculiarity with respect to land bridge archipelagos and a somewhat unclear signal for the small‐island effect.

Adopting a multifaceted approach of biodiversity is believed to capture different aspects of the ecosystem functioning and it is thus advised for conservation prioritisation, especially for anthropogenic ecosystems but this key topic has never been conducted for the Mediterranean tree assemblages, despite their ecological importance. We explored how the multi-faceted diversity of woody plant assemblages, as measured by taxonomic (TD), functional (FD) and phylogenetic (PD) diversities, are distributed over space in the French part of the Mediterranean biome, and to which extend they are spatially correlated to each other, in order to understand whether one facet can be used as a proxy for another, especially for conservation management purposes.We analysed data from 5885 plots over the study area. We estimated several FD types by considering separately (i) regeneration, (ii) morphology traits (iii) modalities on species ecological properties, and finally (iv) considering all traits together. We used the Rao quadratic entropy to estimate the TD, FD and PD diversity facets. We tested for the links and spatial correlation (congruence) levels among these facets, using simultaneous autoregressive (SAR) models and partial Mantel tests.Spatial structure varied among diversity facets and spatial autocorrelation patterns were identified for all diversity indices from 30 to 50 km distances. We observed a functional convergence and a phylogenetic divergence within tree assemblages comparing to the ones expected given the regional species pool, indicating that even in tree communities with functional similarities, phylogenetic diversity may be high. PD was zero to slightly congruent to FD, regardless the type of functional traits considered. The highest SAR slope (=0.3) and partial Mantel test (=0.2) were revealed between the PD and the FD based on species morphological traits, but still remained considerably low.Each one of the diversity indicators reflected a different tree community spatial pattern. Functional diversity patterns varied according to the type of traits considered. Using only taxonomic indices may be misleading for responding to Mediterranean tree assemblages conservation needs and additional information about the species phylogeny and functional responses to disturbance pressures should be considered in large scale analyses.