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Abstract
The presence of Cedrus atlantica on the European continent, including, especially, the determination of the time of its disappearance from the Iberian Peninsula, is one of the most controversial issues in recent decades regarding the successive extinction of conifers in the Western Mediterranean. This work propounds the possibility that C. atlantica and Pinus nigra could have co-habited in the past, mutually excluding each other in the areas with suitable conditions for both species, where, ultimately, the one that was the most competitive would have remained. The niche overlap in the two-dimensional ecological space was analyzed. In addition, the potential distribution of both species in the Western Mediterranean today and two past periods (Last Glacial Maximum and Mid-Holocene) was modeled to identify their common geographic area of distribution. The species showed very well differentiated niches and a distribution of their habitats virtually segregated by continents since the Mid-Holocene (P. nigra in Europe and C. atlantica in Africa), which responds to differences in climatic affinities. However, the contact of the bordering areas of their distributions in the Baetic mountain range suggests that C. atlantica could have maintained its presence in the Iberian Peninsula until recent times. P. nigra would have displace it in later stages due to its greater prevalence on the continent, so it would have had greater opportunities to occupy the available space.
Highlights
The presence of Cedrus atlantica (Endl.) Carrière on the European continent and the time of its disappearance from the Iberian Peninsula are issues that have raised controversy in recent decades regarding the successive extinction of conifers in the Western Mediterranean [1,2,3]
C. atlantica currently extends the distribution of its potential habitat in the Iberian Peninsula even though the species does not currently inhabit Europe
During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (21 ka), the extension of the habitat would occupy most of the center of the Iberian Peninsula, dominating the plateaus and mountainous areas of the Iberian System, the interior areas near the Cantabrian Mountains and most of the Baetic Mountain Range
Summary
The presence of Cedrus atlantica (Endl.) Carrière on the European continent and the time of its disappearance from the Iberian Peninsula are issues that have raised controversy in recent decades regarding the successive extinction of conifers in the Western Mediterranean [1,2,3]. In the Iberian Peninsula, its last populations had to take refuge in the southern mountains of the Baetics as small, isolated nuclei [3,15] In this context, it has been proposed that the definitive extinction of Cedrus in Europe during the Holocene could be motivated by human action [16,19,20], or even by competition with other species [3,16]. If the ecological affinities of the species are not mutually exclusive and in the absence of barriers to dispersal, this negative association between species suggests the possibility that species of both genera have interacted in the past, mutually excluding each other in areas where they shared a niche and where the one that was more competitive would have remained [27,28]
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