Abstract
The influence of dispersal limitation on species ranges remains controversial. Considering the dramatic impacts of the last glaciation in Europe, species might not have tracked climate changes through time and, as a consequence, their present-day ranges might be in disequilibrium with current climate. For 1016 European plant species, we assessed the relative importance of current climate and limited postglacial migration in determining species ranges using regression modelling and explanatory variables representing climate, and a novel species-specific hind-casting-based measure of accessibility to postglacial colonization. Climate was important for all species, while postglacial colonization also constrained the ranges of more than 50 per cent of the species. On average, climate explained five times more variation in species ranges than accessibility, but accessibility was the strongest determinant for one-sixth of the species. Accessibility was particularly important for species with limited long-distance dispersal ability, with southern glacial ranges, seed plants compared with ferns, and small-range species in southern Europe. In addition, accessibility explained one-third of the variation in species' disequilibrium with climate as measured by the realized/potential range size ratio computed with niche modelling. In conclusion, we show that although climate is the dominant broad-scale determinant of European plant species ranges, constrained dispersal plays an important supplementary role.
Highlights
The ability of species to track areas of suitable climate through time is a major source of uncertainty when predicting climate change impacts on biodiversity
MATERIAL AND METHODS (a) Study species and area We considered the geographical distributions of 2728 native European plant species mapped in the Atlas Florae Europaeae (AFE) on an equal-area grid with cells of ca 50 Â 50 km (AFE cells)
We found evidence that European plant species ranges are strongly shaped by current climate, but that postglacial migrational lag constitutes an additional constraint for more than 50 per cent of species, being more important than climate for 16 per cent
Summary
The ability of species to track areas of suitable climate through time is a major source of uncertainty when predicting climate change impacts on biodiversity. For 1016 European plant species, we assessed the relative importance of current climate and limited postglacial migration in determining species ranges using regression modelling and explanatory variables representing climate, and a novel species-specific hind-casting-based measure of accessibility to postglacial colonization.
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