Liverwort flora of Ayan – a gained link between subarctic and hemiboreal floras in West Okhotiya (Pacific Russia)

Abstract

The liverwort flora of Ayan was first investigated one hundred and fifty years after the first exploration of vascular plants. A number of factors has determined the relatively high taxonomic diversity of liverworts in this hemiarctic flora of small-sized area: 118 species and one subspecies were revealed. These data are new not only for the studied area, but also for the huge land adjacent to the western coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. The liverwort flora possesses the domination of taxa common in the hemiarctic, although with a lot of taxa more common in boreal as well as arctic-alpine environments. The presence of Mega-Beringian and calciphilous taxa is the peculiar trait of the studied liverwort flora. Based on detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), Ayan liverwort flora shows relationships to the continental mainland floras situated both in North-East Asian hemiarctic and hemiboreal East Asia and is, therefore, the link between both. The flora of Ayan surroundings is one of the newly-filled ‘blank spots’ in the possible floral exchange way between Arctic Northeast Asia and mountainous floras of temperate East Asia.

Contribution to the moss flora of Ayan (west coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Russian Far East)

“…Here we can find a contrast in distribution patterns between mosses and hepatics. The analysis of Bakalin et al (2021) found Ayan liverwort flora to be especially similar to Northern Sikhote-Alin, then Southern Sikhote-Alin, and then Northern Hokkaido. For mosses, the Northern Sikhote-Alin is enriched by temperate elements (Fedosov et al, 2016) even more than the Upper Bureya moss flora, and in Southern Sikchote-Alin and then Northern Hokkaido 'Arcto-Tertiary disjuncts' their number still increased.…”

“…Fieldworks were conducted by KK and VB over a total of three weeks in late June -early July of 2019, addressed specifically to liverwort exploration (Bakalin et al, 2021); however, mosses where gathered whereever possible, and 350 moss specimens were collected.…”

Konstantinovia Is Not Monotypic, and a New Attempt to Determine Relationships in Cephaloziellaceae–Scapaniaceae Superclade (Marchantiophyta)

“…On the other hand, it is a chain of disconnected islands that has never been a single land bridge between two continents and a place for the preservation of more southern species in shelters because of insularity. For various groups of plants in the Commander Islands, it is possible to find representatives of either endemic plants or those with locations that are remarkably distant from the main area body [ 13 , 17 , 18 ].…”

“…The ecological habitat of K. beringii is not unusual in terms of the commonness of habitats on both the Commander Islands [ 17 , 18 ] and the Aleutians as a whole [ 19 ]. This is a wet, slightly shaded cliff along the seacoast.…”

The phylogenetic affinity, distribution and variability of Cryptocolea imbricata r.m. Schust. (Marchantiophyta)

“…Cryptocolea imbricata was described by Schuster (1969) from an isolated location in Minnesota and then recorded by him from one station in Michigan and many localities in Ellesmere Island and Greenland (l. c.). The species was later found in Alaska (Steere and Inoue, 1978), Northwest Territories of Canada (Damsholt, 2007), a single locality in Europe (northern Sweden, Schuster & Mårtensson, 1978), one in Svalbard (Frisvoll & Elvebakk, 1996) and many localities in Asia, including its northern part , Schuster & Konstantinova, 1996Fedosov et al, 2015;Fedosov et al, 2020;Konstantinova et al, 2023), mountains of Yakutia (Sofronova, 2018), South Siberia (Mamontov, 2013), and Far East of Russia (Bakalin, 2010, 2015, Bakalin et al, 2021 ( Fig. 6).…”