High species richness in hemiboreal forests of the northern Russian Altai, southern Siberia

Abstract

Questions We discovered forests with very high local numbers of vascular plant species in southern Siberia. Are these the most species‐rich forests of the Eurasian boreal and temperate zones, and which factors cause such high species richness? Location Altai Mountains in southern Siberia, Altai Republic, Russia. Methods We sampled vegetation and measured environmental variables across the Altai Mountains in plots of 100 m2 and established series of nested plots of the size from 1 to 1000 m2 at sites with the highest species richness. We compared the richest forests with other forests of the Altai and with literature records of species‐rich vegetation types from elsewhere. Results The richest forests contained 45 vascular plant species per 1 m2, 82 per 10 m2, 114 per 100 m2 and 149 per 1000 m2. They are open hemiboreal forests dominated by Pinus sylvestris, with an admixture of Betula pendula, and sparse shrub and moss layers. About 95% of their vascular plant species are in the herb layer. All species are native. These forests occur in a forest‐steppe landscape of the northern Altai, where the mean January temperature is between –12.5 and –10 °C, mean July temperature is 16–18 °C, and total annual precipitation is 560–610 mm. Soils are deep and mesic, with a pH of 6.2–6.4. Conclusions Hemiboreal forests of the northern Russian Altai are probably the most species‐rich forests in boreal and temperate Eurasia. Such a high concentration of many species in small plots probably results from the incidental combination of several factors conducive to high species richness. These factors include the rich regional flora of the Altai Mountains, stability of the environment of this region since the Pleistocene, heterogeneity of the mountainous forest‐steppe landscape with a combination of forested areas on north‐facing slopes and steppes on south‐facing ones, an open canopy that ameliorates microclimate conditions but does not exclude light‐demanding species through strong shading, a macroclimate that is not too harsh, mesic soils with near‐neutral pH, and limited competition within the herb layer.

Species Richness Pattern along Altitudinal Gradient in Central European Beech Forests

“…Bruun et al 2006;Grytnes et al 2006;Chytrý et al 2012). The absence of a statistically significant richness-altitude relationship reported by Willner et al (2004) for beech forests can be explained by the evolutionary history of the studied sites (Willner et al 2009) and by the confounding effects of soil nutrient-related parameters and light conditions.…”

Diversification of the cold-adapted butterfly genus Oeneis related to Holarctic biogeography and climatic niche shifts

“…The mountains of Central Asia were free of ice since the Miocene (Kamelin, 1998;Sanmartin et al, 2001) and represented general long term refugia of temperate biota (Tiffney 1985;Chytry et al, 2012;Condamine et al, 2012). The oldest Oeneis lineages (members of the subgenus Protoeneis) and two-thirds of Oeneis diversity (19 species, Table S1) occur in the mountains of Central Asia (region B).…”

“…In particular, the majority of the diversity occurs in the Altai Mts. (Kamelin, 1998), with southern slopes covered by steppe and northern slopes by mixed woodlands (Kamelin, 1998;Chytry et al, 2012). Pleistocene persistence of habitat diversity might have ensured the close vicinity of diverse habitats and thermal environments, and facilitated species survival under climatic changes.…”

Confluence of the Morava and Dyje Rivers: a century of landscape changes in maps

“…These studies are based on the evaluation of old maps and thus fail to capture one of the most important landscape changes of this area -transformation of forest management and woodland structure. Open, structured and/or pasture woodlands are considered to be some of the most important and diverse temperate ecosystems (Chytrý et al, 2012;Eggers et al, 2010;Mabry, Brudvig, & Atwell, 2010) and together with old and solitary trees (mainly oaks, which are remains of these traditional forest management methods) they are key features of biodiversity (Hall & Bunce, 2011;Hédl, Kopecký, & Komárek, 2010;Vodka, Konvička, & Čížek, 2009). Such ecosystems used to be common throughout the whole of Europe (Hartel & Plieninger, 2014;Vera, 2000) and the Czech Republic (Szabó, Müllerová, Suchánková, & Kotačka, 2015).…”