Marie Brockmann-Jerosch and her influence on Alpine phylogeography

Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Marie Brockmann-Jerosch wrote, partly in collaboration with her husband Heinrich Brockmann-Jerosch, three influential overview articles on the origin and history of the Swiss alpine flora. Of special interest to her were the types and locations of Pleistocene glacial refugia of alpine plants. She summarised that there had been glacial refugia in the southern and northern peripheral European Alps and also supported glacial survival of high-alpine specialist plants in central Alpine nunatak regions within glaciated areas of the Alps. In contrast, Marie Brockmann-Jerosch dismissed the occurrence of glacial relicts in the lowlands and foothills north of the Alps: she rather saw the conspicuous stations of alpine plants in the lowlands as the result of post-glacial long-distance dispersal of seed out of the Alps. In this article, we first give a brief description of Marie BrockmannJerosch's life and then show that modern phylogeographic research has largely proven her views of the glacial history of the alpine flora and that her writings are still intellectually stimulating and worthwhile reading.

Extensive range persistence in peripheral and interior refugia characterizes Pleistocene range dynamics in a widespread Alpine plant species (Senecio carniolicus, Asteraceae)

“…2005). Thus, the discussion on peripheral vs. nunatak survival appears to have been settled in favour of the former (but see Holderegger et al. 2011).…”

“…Potentially governed by the inherent difficulty of providing convincing evidence for nunatak survival because of, for instance, extirpation of the likely small nunatak populations or genetic swamping by geographically close peripheral populations ( Stehlik et al 2001 ; Hewitt 2004 ), results of numerous phylogeographic studies within the last decades have diminished the importance of nunatak survival and identified peripheral refugia as the most relevant ones ( Gabrielsen et al 1997 ; Schönswetter et al 2005 ). Thus, the discussion on peripheral vs. nunatak survival appears to have been settled in favour of the former (but see Holderegger et al 2011 ). On the occasion of recent evidence for nunatak survival in arctic-alpine plants and animals ( Lohse et al 2011 ; Westergaard et al 2011 ), it has been (re-)emphasized that nunatak and peripheral survival are not mutually exclusive and actually may both be involved in an organism’s Pleistocene history, yet potentially at different time levels ( Schneeweiss & Schönswetter 2011 ).…”

Do revisitation studies overestimate local extinction?

“…In particular, there are two extraordinarily complete surveys of all sites featuring mountain plants in Tössbergland from the early 20th century. Gustav Hegi (1902), a prominent European botanist, conducted his doctoral research in Tössbergland, where he tried to completely monitor the sites where mountain plants occurred to confirm the hypothesis that glacial relics existed in the region (Holderegger et al, 2011). Hegi surveyed the mountain plants of Tössbergland during four vegetation periods (Hegi, 1902).…”