European glacial relict snails and plants: environmental context of their modern refugial occurrence in southern Siberia

Abstract

M. 2015 (October): European glacial relict snails and plants: environmental context of their modern refugial occurrence in southern Siberia.Knowledge of present-day communities and ecosystems resembling those reconstructed from the fossil record can help improve our understanding of historical distribution patterns and species composition of past communities. Here, we use a unique data set of 570 plots explored for vascular plant and 315 for land-snail assemblages located along a 650-km-long transect running across a steep climatic gradient in the Russian Altai Mountains and their foothills in southern Siberia. We analysed climatic and habitat requirements of modern populations for eight land-snail and 16 vascular plant species that are considered characteristic of the full-glacial environment of central Europe based on (i) fossil evidence from loess deposits (snails) or (ii) refugial patterns of their modern distributions (plants). The analysis yielded consistent predictions of the full-glacial central European climate derived from both snail and plant populations. We found that the distribution of these 24 species was limited to the areas with mean annual temperature varying from À6.7 to 3.4°C (median À2.5°C) and with total annual precipitation varying from 137 to 593 mm (median 283 mm). In both groups there were species limited to areas with colder and drier macroclimates (e.g. snails Columella columella and Pupilla loessica, and plants Kobresia myosuroides and Krascheninnikovia ceratoides), whereas other species preferred areas with relatively warmer and/or moister macroclimates (e.g. snails Pupilla turcmenica and P. alpicola, and plants Artemisia laciniata and Carex capillaris). Analysis of climatic conditions also indicated that distributional shifts of the studied species during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition were closely related to their climatic tolerances. Our results suggest that the habitat requirements of southern Siberian populations can provide realistic insights into the reconstruction of Eurasian, especially central European, glacial environments. Data obtained from modern populations also highlight the importance of wet habitats as refugia in the generally dry full-glacial landscape.

A modern analogue of the Pleistocene steppe‐tundra ecosystem in southern Siberia

“…Many species of plants considered as glacial relicts in Europe (Horsák et al . ) and the whole set of Euro‐Siberian LGM tree species are also common in the Altai‐Sayan Mountains (Meusel et al . 1965–1992; Hultén & Fries ).…”

New information augmenting the picture of local environment at the LGM/LGT in the context of the Middle Danube region

“…damper northern slopes) within the prevailing cold steppe or steppe-tundra. Recently, it is possible to come across analogous types of vegetation in Siberia (Horsák et al, 2010(Horsák et al, , 2015Magyari et al, 2014a) or Mongolia. These habitats are characterised by both low temperatures during winter season and cold dry winds and very low rainfall, which impose large limitations on the presence of dense coniferous forests (dark tajga forests).…”

“…snails) in microclimatically suitable conditions in the face of the generally prevailing climate has to be considered as well (e.g. Horsák et al, 2015;Juřičková et al, 2014;Ložek, 1990Ložek, , 2001Ložek, , 2006.…”

Microsatellite variation in three calcium-tolerant species of peat moss detected specific genotypes of Sphagnum warnstorfii on magnesium-rich bedrock

“…For Siberia (the Altai, the Western Sayan) we used samples collected for another project on recent similarities with European glacial landscapes (e.g. Horsák et al 2015). We included Siberia because of the possible effect of Pleistocene history on the genetic structure of S. warnstorfii, that is acknowledged by Mikulášková et al (2015).…”