New and Noteworthy Bryophyte Records from Croatia

Abstract

Within the course of a recent, extensive bryophyte survey across the whole country, eight moss taxa have been recorded for the first time in Croatia: Conardia compacta (Drumm. ex Müll. Hal.) H. Rob., Cynodontium tenellum (Schimp.) Limpr., Dichodontium flavescens (Dicks.) Lindb., Fissidens fontanus (Bach. Pyl.) Steud., Orthotrichum philibertii Venturi, Rhabdoweisia crispata (Dicks.) Lindb., Schistidium trichodon (Brid.) Poelt var. trichodon and Tortella fasciculata (Culm.) Culm.. In addition, new localities of five rare taxa are presented: Didymodon tophaceus subsp. sicculus (M.J. Cano, Ros, García-Zam. J. Guerra) Jan Kučera, Ephemerum serratum (Hedw.) Hampe, Mannia triandra (Scop.) Grolle, Oxystegus tenuirostris (Hook. Taylor) A.J.E. Sm. and Sphaerocarpos michelii Bellardi. Ecological and chorological data are provided for each of the reported taxa. Concluding, at the current state of knowledge, Croatian bryoflora includes 705 taxa, out of which 541 mosses, 162 liverworts and two hornworts.

Contribution to bryophyte flora of Croatia: new finding of rare aquatic moss Fissidens fontanus (Bach. Pyl.) Steud. in Lake Visovac (Krka National Park)

“…Only two bryophyte species were found, occasionally intermixed with other vegetation. Fontinalis antipyretica Hedw., a common aquatic moss of the streams and stagnant water in Croatia (Alegro & Šegota, 2019), was found within nine transects, mostly in shallow water (less than two meters deep), generally in small patches. Three larger stands were recorded in northern, northwestern and southwestern parts of the lake, not forming a clear vegetation belt.…”

“…Bryophyte taxa were sampled and stored within the plastic containers, not preserved, but identified in fresh condition using Smith (2004) and Frey et al (2006). Nomenclature follows Ros et al (2013), applied in Alegro & Šegota (2019). Afterwards, the bryophytes were dried and placed within the paper envelopes and stored at the ZA collection (Thiers, 2019) where they were digitized within the Flora Croatica Database (Alegro & Šegota, 2019) with all metadata publically available via the virtual herbarium (Rešetnik & Šegota, 2019).…”

“…Although Croatia is bryologically one of the most explored countries of the former Yugoslavia and Southeastern Europe (Sabovljević et al, 2011), the data are to a large extent spatially and temporally biased (Alegro & Šegota, 2019). Starting in the first decades of the 19 th century, the research was at its peak of intensity at the turn of the 19 th and the 20 th century, to be intensified again in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the almost complete lack of any bryological work until 2009 (Alegro et al, 2012).…”

“…Starting in the first decades of the 19 th century, the research was at its peak of intensity at the turn of the 19 th and the 20 th century, to be intensified again in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the almost complete lack of any bryological work until 2009 (Alegro et al, 2012). Thenceforward, during the last decade, 58 new taxa were discovered as new for Croatia, mainly owing to cooperation between the Hungarian Natural History Museum and the University of Zagreb, (Blockeel et al, 2009, Ellis et al, 2012a, 2012b, 2015, 2016Papp & Sabovljević, 2009;Köckinger et al, 2012;Papp et al, 2013aPapp et al, , 2013bPapp et al, , 2013cAlegro et al, 2014Alegro et al, , 2015Alegro et al, , 2018aAlegro et al, , 2018bAlegro et al, , 2019Sabovljević et al, 2018).…”

“…In addition, a publically available database with geocoded spatio-temporal data has been established in order to summarise all historical literature and herbarium data (Alegro & Šegota, 2019). However, despite considerable progress in knowledge of the diversity and distribution of Croatian bryophytes in the last decade, a great shortage of data is still evident.…”