The Taxonomically Richest Liverwort Hemiboreal Flora in Eurasia Is in the South Kurils

Abstract

The long coexistence of various floral elements, landscape diversity, and island isolation led to the formation of the richest Eurasian hemiboreal liverwort flora in the southern Kurils. This land that covers less than 5000 square kilometres and houses 242 species and two varieties of liverworts and hornworts. The flora ‘core’ is represented by hemiboreal East Asian and boreal circumpolar taxa. Other elements that have noticeable input in the flora formation are cool-temperate East Asian hypoarctomontane circumpolar and arctomontane. The distribution of some species is restricted to the thermal pools near active or dormant volcanoes or volcanic ash deposits; such species generally provide specificity to the flora. Despite the territorial proximity, the climate of each considered island is characterized by features that, in the vast majority of cases, distinguish it from the climate of the neighbouring island. The last circumstance may inspire the difference in the liverwort taxonomic composition of each of the islands. The comparison of the taxonomic composition of district floras in the Amphi-Pacific hemiarctic, boreal, and cool-temperate Asia revealed four main focal centres: East Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island, the southern Sikhote-Alin and the East Manchurian Mountains, the mountains of the southern part of the Korean Peninsula, and the South Kurils plus northern Hokkaido. The remaining floras involved in the comparison occupy an intermediate position between these four centres.

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

“…However, a few of the richest local floras of the Russian Far East leave Badzhal Range flora behind. 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).…”

The Liverwort and Hornwort Flora of Jeju Island, Republic of Korea: A Volcanic Island with a Unique Mixture of Subtropical, Temperate, Boreal, and Arctomontane Taxa

“…To evaluate the position of the studied flora within the system of local floras in the northern part of the East Asian floristic region, we used detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) based on the matrix completed mainly with the same method used in the identification of the position of bryophyte flora of the southern Kurils [ 30 ]. The comparison involves 17 local floras ( Table 3 ) and is based on a matrix where each species was marked as 1 (presence) or 0 (absence).…”

Liverworts of Magadan: Life on the Edge of Beringia

“…Floral relationship analysis was carried out using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA), which is applicable for datasets of various sizes and has been tested by us several times for amphi-Pacific liverwort floras [26][27][28][29][30]. The material for the analysis was our compiled matrix (Supplementary Table S1) of the species composition of floras, which is a summary species distribution of the compared floras, where the presence of a species is marked with the number 1, and its absence with the number 0.…”