Liverworts of the South Kamchatka Nature Park: Survival in Active Volcanism Land

Abstract

Kamchatka, due to its position in hemiarctic northeast Asia on the migration pathways of taxa from Asia to America and vice versa, which has an insular geographical position and provides numerous pieces of evidence regarding current active volcanism, has a peculiar flora. The study of the liverwort flora of the southeastern part of the Kamchatka Peninsula (South Kamchatka Nature Park), which, until now, has been very poorly explored, showed high taxonomic richness and some specificity due to volcanic evidence. In total, 132 species have been recorded in this sector of the “Pacific Ring of Fire”. This number is quite high compared to other floras of hemiarctic Asia. The influence of volcanism on flora formation is prominent due to the regular renewal of substrates, the appearance of specific habitats (for example, thermal water outlets), the displacement of vegetation belts, and ashfalls leading to the presence of extended spaces free of vegetation cover and is an area that is open for invaders. The altitudinal zonality, despite the difference of 2000 m in elevation, is not clearly expressed in the flora of the liverworts: arctomontane species descend far down the altitudinal profile, reaching the Betula ermanii forests. The “plantless” uppermost belt in the mountains, commonly described in floristic studies of vascular plants, is not actually free of plants if liverwort occurrences are considered. A number of species normally occupy unusual habitats in the studied flora due to contemporary volcanism evidence, e.g., sulfur-rich substrates.

To the knowledge of liverwort diversity in Badzhal range (Khabarovsk Territory, Russian Far East)

“…The leader among such floras are the Southern Kurils, whose liverwort flora reaches 242 taxa (Bakalin et al, 2022a). Other local floras exceed studied area in the number of species in lesser extent: Bystrinsky Nature Park -144 taxa (Klimova, 2015), South Kamchatka Nature Park -132 taxa (Bakalin et al, 2022b). Only for four species exceed the number of known taxa in the flora of the Ayan surroundings on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk (Bakalin et al, 2021).…”

Increased biocrust cover and activity in the highlands of Iceland after five growing seasons of experimental warming

“…Only a handful have been conducted involving ecosystems that are at least partially covered with biocrust (Chapin et al, 1991;Rousk et al, 2018;Sullivan et al, 2008;Wahren et al, 2005). In our study, we investigated the potential effects of warming on biogeochemical and ecological properties of a sub-Arctic alpine biocrust characterized by the liverwort Anthelia jurkatzkana (Salazar et al, 2022) -a type of biocrust common in Icelandic highlands with heavy snow cover (Aradottir and Halldorsson, 2018;Arnalds et al, 2015;Ortiz-Rivero et al, 2023) and in other high latitude regions (Bakalin et al, 2022;Belland, 1983;Konstantinova and Savchenko, 2008;Smith, 1917;Talbot et al, 2018).…”

Mosses of the South Kamchatka Nature Park (Russian Far East)

“…South Kamchatka Nature Park is situated in the southeast part of Kamchatka, in the most humid and volcanically active part of the peninsula, facing regular volcanic eruptions accompanied by catastrophic ashfalls. The environment features and the climate of the area are described in details by Bakalin at al. (2022).…”

“…Despite the numerous attempts to revise South-East Asian Philonotis species, their taxonomy remains insufficiently known, which does not allow us at the moment decide, if the Ksudach Philonotis is one of much more southern species of the genus, brought to Kamchatka with migratory birds, or it is an undescribed relic species. The former explanation is consistent with another unexpected finding in this place of a largerly southern Scapania parvitexta Steph., at more than 1000 km north of the nearest locality in South Kurils and Japan (Bakalin et al, 2022).…”