Abstract
Despite not having been fully recognized, the cryptic northern refugia of temperate forest vegetation in Central and Western Europe are one of the most important in the Holocene history of the vegetation on the subcontinent. We have studied a forest grass Bromus benekenii in 39 populations in Central, Western and Southern Europe with the use of PCR-ISSR fingerprinting. The indices of genetic population diversity, multivariate, and Bayesian analyses, supplemented with species distribution modelling have enabled at least three putative cryptic northern refugial areas to be recognized: in Western Europe—the Central and Rhenish Massifs, in Central Europe—the Bohemia–Moravia region and in the Eastern/Western Carpathians. Central Poland is the regional genetic melting-pot where several migratory routes might have met. Southern Poland had a different postglacial history and was under the influence of an Eastern/Western Carpathian cryptic refugium. More forest species should be checked in a west–east gradient in Europe to corroborate the hypothesis on the Western European glacial refugia.
Highlights
A key to understanding the origin of contemporary floras are glacial refugia, i.e. spots where some thermophilous elements could have survived
More forest species should be checked in a west–east gradient in Europe to corroborate the hypothesis on the Western European glacial refugia
It is expected the generally high genetic richness of the populations in European contact zones (Petit et al 2003). Such a pattern was found for example in Quercus in Scandinavia, where the marginal northern occurrence of the species was independently colonised from two varying directions (Ferris 1998), and in the present paper in B. benekenii in central Poland (B17, B19) and Germany (B23)
Summary
A key to understanding the origin of contemporary floras are glacial refugia, i.e. spots where some thermophilous elements could have survived. This view was supplemented by the concept of the northern cryptic refugia (Bhgawat and Willis 2008; Provan and Bennett 2008) This hypothesis stated that temperate-boreal, and thermophilous temperate tree species, might have survived the last glacial maximum (LGM, pleniglacial, *21,000 year BP) in refugial areas, ‘‘oases’’ in Central Europe, where sufficient warmth and humidity existed in small micro-environmental pockets (Willis et al 2000). Brewer et al (2002) recognised primary, full-glacial refugia, and secondary, temporary refugia for Quercus sp., which supported populations of the termophilous trees during the short, climatically unfavourable, late-glacial Younger Dryas stadial This picture, based on the fossil pollen data, is complemented by chloroplast DNA data (Bordacs et al 2002)
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