Patterns of land-snail succession in Central Europe over the last 15,000 years: main changes along environmental, spatial and temporal gradients

Abstract

Land snail shell assemblages have been used since the pioneering days of palaeoecology to describe Quaternary environmental changes. Despite the many advantages of this proxy, it has recently been rather overlooked. There are more than 300 mollusc successions from localities throughout the Czech and Slovak Republics, making this a globally unique archive. We selected 91 of these successions for radiocarbon dating and further detailed processing. Based on analyses of 828 mollusc assemblages we found a significant increase in both total species richness and number of forest species since the Lateglacial, with a decrease in both after the Middle Holocene. In contrast, the opposite response was found for open-country species and the proportion of xerophilous species. The proportion of forest and open-country species reversed at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition (approx. 11,500 cal yrs BP). Changes in species richness were rather stable across the study area and at different elevation, contrary to changes in species composition. MDS ordination based on presence/absence data show four main patterns of species composition associated with the number of forest species in a sample, position of site along the west–east direction, the proportion of hygrophilous species and, finally, with the age of the mollusc assemblage. The number of forest species indicates the main pattern of changes in the composition of Central European land snail assemblages from the Lateglacial to the present. We confirmed the application and temporal stability of ecological groups of snails as a useful tool for reconstruction of the terrestrial palaeoenvironment.