Glacial refugia of mammals in Europe: evidence from fossil records

Abstract

1. Glacial refugia were core areas for the survival of temperate species during unfavourable environmental conditions and were the sources of postglacial recolonizations. Unfortunately, the locations of glacial refugia of animals and plants are usually described by models, without reference to facts about real geographical ranges at that time. 2.Careful consideration of the faunal assemblages of archaeological sites from the Younger Palaeolithic, which are precisely dated to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), gives indications about the distribution of species during the LGM (23 000-16 000 BP ) and provides evidence for the locations of glacial refugia for mammalian species in Europe. 3. In Europe, 47 LGM sites, dating from 23 000 to 16 000 BP and containing typical temperate mammal species, have been described. The geographical range of these archaeological sites clearly shows a distribution which differs from the hypothesized traditional refuge areas of the temperate fauna. A considerable number of sites situated in the Dordogne in southwestern France and the Carpathian region contain records of red deer Cervus elaphus , roe deer Capreolus capreolus , wild boar Sus scrofa and red fox Vulpes vulpes . 4. The faunal composition of the majority of the evaluated Palaeolithic sites in the southern European peninsulas (with the exception of Greece), as well as France and the Carpathian region, indicates the co-occurrence of these temperate species with cold-adapted faunal elements such as mammoth Mammuthus primigenius and/or reindeer Rangifer tarandus . 5. The survival of species in Central European refugia would have significant consequences for phylogeography and would be revealed by the dominant distribution of haplotypes, originating from this region. A Carpathian refuge could also be the reason for the very early records of small mammals or mustelids from the Late-Glacial or Interstadials before the LGM in regions like southern Germany.

Low genetic variation support bottlenecks in Scandinavian red deer

“…LGM-dated archaeological findings coincide with these but suggest wider refuges which include areas in southwestern France and the Carpathians (Sommer and Nadachowski 2006;Sommer et al 2008).…”

Mitochondrial phylogeography of the edible dormouse (Glis glis) in the western Palearctic region

“…The Iberian and Balkans populations of G. glis are characterized by especially low genetic diversity, despite these 2 regions possibly having served as refugia during the culmination of the last glacial maximum (Sommer and Nadachowski 2006). It is possible that a genetic bottleneck occurred in G. glis during this period in the Iberian Peninsula (and perhaps the Balkans), which is thought to have occurred in A. sylvaticus (Michaux et al 2003).…”

Geography and host biogeography matter for understanding the phylogeography of a parasite

“…Similarly, some species such as the brown bear (Ursus arctos) (Taberlet et al, 1998) or different small mammal species [Clethrionomys glareolus (Deffontaine et al, 2005); Sorex minutus and S. araneus (Bilton et al, 1998) and M. arvalis (Jaarola and Searle, 2004) and M. oeconomus (Brunhoff et al, 2003)] display genetic lineages suggesting that these species also survived in more easterly refuges (the Caucasus or the southern Urals) and in Central Europe (Kotlı´k et al, 2006). Moreover, the examination of the fossil record of European temperate species during the last ice age (26000-13000 years ago) reveals that environmental conditions were not severe enough in these regions to prevent the survival of forest-dependent species, notably in Poland (Sommer and Nadachowski, 2006). Thus the model of exclusively southern glacial refuges in Europe becomes more and more limited as phylogeographic studies accumulate in north Eastern Europe.…”