Ecological factors driving plant species diversity in the South Aegean Volcanic Arc and other central Aegean islands

Network biogeographical analysis of the central Aegean archipelago

“…Kik is climatically compartmentalized (Theocharatos, ; Koutsoyiannis et al ., ; Gouvas & Sakellarios, ) and the borders of the five modules correspond remarkably well to the climatic compartmentalization of Kik . This finding supports the fact that the climatic differences between Kik and its surrounding phytogeographical regions are responsible for the absence of several Peloponnesian and East Aegean endemics from the area (Kougioumoutzis & Tiniakou, ). Our results are also in accordance with the findings of Weigelt & Kreft (), who stated that islands receive colonizers from climatically similar areas.…”

“…Mean annual precipitation has a strong negative impact on the endemic species richness in Kik and constrains the dispersal of several Greek endemic species in the region (Kougioumoutzis & Tiniakou, ). Kik is climatically compartmentalized (Theocharatos, ; Koutsoyiannis et al ., ; Gouvas & Sakellarios, ) and the borders of the five modules correspond remarkably well to the climatic compartmentalization of Kik .…”

“…VC and NWC are the most and less species‐rich modules in the network, respectively (Table ). This is not surprising because in the Cyclades geologically more diverse islands host higher than average plant diversity and, more specifically, the volcanic islands of Kik demonstrate high plant species richness values (Kougioumoutzis & Tiniakou, ). NC has the highest module endemism in the network.…”

“…Cellinese et al ., ). Although the effects of characteristics of eastern (Panitsa et al ., , ), southern (Kagiampaki et al ., ) and central Aegean islands (Kougioumoutzis & Tiniakou, ) upon total and endemic species richness are now well known, our understanding of the processes driving the assembly of the central Aegean island communities is still far from complete. One approach to advancing our understanding of such processes is to analyse if and how individual islands shape species distributions across an archipelago.…”

“…The phytogeographical region of the Cyclades ( Kik hereafter) has long been considered floristically impoverished compared with the other phytogeographical regions of Greece (Phitos et al ., ). However, in a recent analysis (Kougioumoutzis & Tiniakou, ), some areas of the Cyclades emerged as plant diversity hotspots. The Cyclades host 1640 taxa (Tan & Iatrou, ), 157 of which are Greek endemics (9.38%) and demonstrate lower than normal endemism in relation to their area (Georghiou & Delipetrou, ).…”