Alpines, trees, and refugia in Europe

Abstract

Refugia were critically important for species survival in both glacial and interglacial stages of the Quaternary. The classical view of glacial stages is that alpine and arctic plants were widespread in the lowlands of central Europe and around the margins of the continental and alpine ice-sheets, whereas trees were restricted to localised refugial areas in southern Europe and the Mediterranean basin. New palaeobotanical evidence in Europe suggests, however, that this classical view is incomplete and that tree distributional ranges during the glacial stages were more extensive and included many local areas of small populations in central and eastern Europe growing in so-called 'cryptic' refugia. We argue that this concept of 'cryptic' refugia is also applicable to arctic and alpine plants during temperate interglacial stages where small localised populations grow in naturally open habitats that are not beyond or above the forest limit. Determination of the whereabouts of these cold-and warm-stage 'cryptic' refugia is very important in our understanding of the spatial patterns of present day genetic diversity and the possible rates of spread of trees in response to future climate change.

Arabidopsis hybrid speciation processes

“…Diploid A. lyrata populations are restricted to the warmer eastern margin of the eastern Austrian Forealps. These populations are found in cryptic refugia, which are characterized by the occurrence of cold-adapted plants that survived the interglacials and Holocene warming in naturally open habitats such as single, exposed rocks or rocky slopes (19). Tetraploid A. lyrata populations are located in the central and northeastern Austrian Forealps.…”

Glacial survival of trophically linked boreal species in northern Europe

“…B 284: 20162799 episode (e.g. [41,58]), although SDM analyses showed no evidence of suitable habitats in northeast Europe at the LGM.…”

Eels, Beavers, and Horses: Human Niche Construction in the European Late Upper Palaeolithic

“…Fire may also have played an important role in maintaining moderate to high disturbance regimes (Thonicke et al 2005) and variations in lithology, geomorphology and geo-hydrological conditions created locally variable vegetation patterns as has been show for the Netherlands (Hoek 1997). Of particular importance here is the probably persistence of more climatically temperate refugia, so called cryptic refugia (Birks & Willis 2008), in valley floors dominated by willows, birch, hornbeam and alder (Ponel & Cooper 1990).…”