Abstract
Some decades ago, biogeographers distinguished three major faunal types of high importance for Europe: (i) Mediterranean elements with exclusive glacial survival in the Mediterranean refugia, (ii) Siberian elements with glacial refugia in the eastern Palearctic and only postglacial expansion to Europe and (iii) arctic and/or alpine elements with large zonal distributions in the periglacial areas and postglacial retreat to the North and/or into the high mountain systems. Genetic analyses have unravelled numerous additional refugia both of continental and Mediterranean species, thus strongly modifying the biogeographical view of Europe. This modified notion is particularly true for the so-called Siberian species, which in many cases have not immigrated into Europe during the postglacial period, but most likely have survived the last, or even several glacial phases, in extra-Mediterranean refugia in some climatically favourable but geographically limited areas of southern Central and Eastern Europe. Recently, genetic analyses revealed that typical Mediterranean species have also survived the Last Glacial Maximum in cryptic northern refugia (e.g. in the Carpathians or even north of the Alps) in addition to their Mediterranean refuge areas.
Highlights
The biogeography of the western Palearctic is quite complex and a fascinating and challenging research subject [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
As recent reviews already address these extra-Mediterranean refugia in artic/alpine species [10,45,46,47,48], we focus in this article on continental and Mediterranean species
Analyses of the mtDNA locus COI of the samples from Central and East Europe, the southern Alps and the western Carpathian Basin strongly supported the genetic lineages detected with allozyme electrophoreses [53]. These results confirm the idea of a larger number of extra-Mediterranean Würm ice age refuge areas in Europe and not postglacial immigration to Europe out of Asiatic core areas
Summary
The biogeography of the western Palearctic is quite complex and a fascinating and challenging research subject [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Analyses of the mtDNA locus COI of the samples from Central and East Europe, the southern Alps and the western Carpathian Basin strongly supported the genetic lineages detected with allozyme electrophoreses [53] These results confirm the idea of a larger number of extra-Mediterranean Würm ice age refuge areas in Europe and not postglacial immigration to Europe out of Asiatic core areas. These ice age rear edges became the leading edges of the postglacial northwards range expansions, strongly impacting the genetic constitution of Central and North Europe in many plant and animal species In many cases, such populations have been characterised as localised subspecies of extended polytypic continental species, and they are considered as evolutionarily significant units (ESUs) of high conservation priority [95]. Evolutionary Zoology, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Debrecen, Egyetem-tér 1, Debrecen H-4010, Hungary
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