Abstract
The botanical exploration of the Majella National Park has a long tradition dating back to the eighteenth century. However, the lichen biota of this area is still poorly investigated. To provide a baseline for future investigations, in this annotated checklist, we summarised all available information on the occurrence of lichens in the Majella National Park, retrieved from previous literature, herbarium material and original data produced by recent research.The checklist includes 342 infrageneric taxa. However, seven taxa are considered as dubious, thus setting the number of accepted taxa at 335, i.e. 45.8% of those currently known to occur in the Abruzzo Region. This checklist provides a baseline of the lichens known to occur in the Majella National Park, highlighting the potential of this area as a hotspot of lichen biodiversity, especially from a biogeographical point of view as indicated by the occurrence of several arctic-alpine species that form disjunct populations in the summit area of the massif.
Highlights
The botanical exploration of the Majella National Park has a long tradition dating back to the eighteenth century, which has provided the basis for the compilation of a recent checklist of vascular plants including 2286 infrageneric taxa (Conti et al 2019)
To provide a baseline for future investigations, in this annotated checklist, we have summarised all available information on the occurrence of lichens in the Majella National Park, retrieved from previous literature, herbarium material and original data produced by our research
Valle dell’Orfento (J74). – This is a silicicolus taxon whose occurrence in the Majella massif would be related to flint limestoine. Since this would be the only record for Abruzzo, it requires confirmation. This checklist provides a baseline of the lichens known to occur in the Majella National Park, highlighting the potential of this area as a hotspot of lichen biodiversity, especially from a biogeographical point of view
Summary
The botanical exploration of the Majella National Park has a long tradition dating back to the eighteenth century, which has provided the basis for the compilation of a recent checklist of vascular plants including 2286 infrageneric taxa (Conti et al 2019) This massif clearly is a hotspot of plant diversity due to the interaction of physical, climatic and biogeographic factors. Historical data are scanty, the main contribution being that by Nimis and Tretiach (1999), who carried out intensive lichen collections along the eastern part of the Italian peninsula. These authors collected several specimens, currently stored in the TSB herbarium, in at least five localities distributed along a steep elevational gradient, from 500 to 2500 m, in the Majella National Park. Several arctic-alpine lichens occur there in small and disjunct areas at the southernmost limit of their European distribution, the nearest populations being in the Alps (Nimis 2016)
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