Large Number Of Taxa Research Articles

Diptera as predators in biological control: applications and future perspectives

AbstractThe role of dipteran predators in biological pest control programs is reviewed and discussed. Diptera encompasses a large number of potentially efficient predators for biological pest control, yet only a few species are routinary used. The families Syrphidae and Cecidomyiidae provide some of the most successful examples of biological control, but other families (e.g., Muscidae, Sarcophagidae, Sciomyzidae) also include species with that potential. Most applications of Diptera as predators involve the conservation biological control approach, while the augmentative approach has involved only a few species, almost exclusively of Syrphidae and Cecidomyiidae. In a few cases, classical biological control has been employed. Commercialization of species mainly to be used in the augmentative approach is discussed, also focusing on the critical issues linked to rearing methods. The dual services performed by Diptera (pollination as adults and biological control as larvae) have been studied in detail for Syrphidae only, but would deserve further study in other families, e.g., Sarcophagidae. This is the first review in which the use of predatory Diptera in biological control programs is investigated for all families and in all types of applications. This review recommends a multi-taxon approach in the use of Diptera in biological control since a large number of taxa have considerable potential, although this has not yet been tested in practical applications.

Diatom communities of high-altitude creeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Diatoms from two high-altitude creeks in Bosnia and Herzegovina were studied from June 2005 to May 2007. Along with diatoms, water temperature, pH, conductivity and nutrients were also monitored, indicating stable physical and chemical conditions, low organic loading and oligotrophy. A total of 130 diatom taxa (species and subspecies) were recorded. Mostly oligotrophic and oligo-mesotrophic indicators were recorded in the creeks. The most abundant genera were Eunotia (15), Pinnularia (13), Gomphonema (10) and Navicula (9). The following taxa were recorded in all samples: Cymbopleura naviculiformis (Auerswald ex Heiberg) Krammer, Decussiphycus hexagonus (Torka) Guiry & Gandhi, Eunotia arcus Ehrenberg, Frustulia vulgaris (Thwaites) De Toni, Pinnularia borealis Ehrenberg and Pinnularia viridis (Nitzsch) Ehrenberg. Five new diatom taxa for Bosnia and Herzegovina were recorded. According to the German Red List, the largest number of taxa (34 for creek 1 and 27 for creek 2) were identified as declining taxa and 12 taxa as endangered ones (three for creek 1 and nine for creek 2). The high species richness and the presence of diatom taxa included on the German Red List underline the importance of protecting and preserving this important biotope.

Seasonal dynamics of the Upper Ob zoobenthos

results of studies of the seasonal dynamics of the Upper Ob zoobenthos in the city of Novosibirsk are presented. Zoobenthos rivers Ob the growing season of 2022, the Ob was represented by 6 systematic classes: bivalves (Bivalvia) and gastropods (Gastropoda), small-lobed worms (Oligochaeta),leeches (Hirudinea), multi-legged crayfish (Amphipoda), insects (Insecta), including from the orders of mayflies (Efemeroptera), brooks (Trichoptera) and diptera (Diptera) from the families of bell mosquitoes (Chironomidae) and woodlice (Ceratopogonidae). A total of 43 species of invertebrates have been found. The largest number of taxa was observed in summer — 27, the minimum in autumn — 16. During the entire growing season, chironomid larvae and gastropods were observed in the benthic fauna. In the spring, the maximum species diversity was noted in the family of bell mosquitoes (Chironomidae) — 18 out of 24 of the total composition. The larvae of chironomids played the main role in the number, in the biomass — an autoacclimatizant — a gastropod mollusk (Viviparus viviparus (L.), belonging to a benthic non-feed for fish. The specific weight of this species in the total biomass reached 92.7%. In summer, V. viviparus (L.) dominated both in abundance and in biomass. The zoobenthos of the autumn period was characterized by a decrease in species diversity and abundance compared to previous seasons: 16 species from 5 classes were oted in the species composition, the number decreased by almost 2 times. The gastropod mollusk V. viviparus (L.) dominated in all indicators, as in summer. The average number of zoobenthos during the growing season was 527 copies/m2, the average biomass was 532,388 g/m2, of which 222 copies/m2 and 531,463 g/m2 were autoacclimatizant gastropod mollusk V. viviparus (L.).

Dollo-CDP: a polynomial-time algorithm for the clade-constrained large Dollo parsimony problem

The last decade of phylogenetics has seen the development of many methods that leverage constraints plus dynamic programming. The goal of this algorithmic technique is to produce a phylogeny that is optimal with respect to some objective function and that lies within a constrained version of tree space. The popular species tree estimation method ASTRAL, for example, returns a tree that (1) maximizes the quartet score computed with respect to the input gene trees and that (2) draws its branches (bipartitions) from the input constraint set. This technique has yet to be used for parsimony problems where the input are binary characters, sometimes with missing values. Here, we introduce the clade-constrained character parsimony problem and present an algorithm that solves this problem for the Dollo criterion score in O(|Sigma |^{3.726}(n+k) + |Sigma |^{1.726}nk) time, where n is the number of leaves, k is the number of characters, and Sigma is the set of clades used as constraints. Dollo parsimony, which requires traits/mutations to be gained at most once but allows them to be lost any number of times, is widely used for tumor phylogenetics as well as species phylogenetics, for example analyses of low-homoplasy retroelement insertions across the vertebrate tree of life. This motivated us to implement our algorithm in a software package, called Dollo-CDP, and evaluate its utility for analyzing retroelement insertion presence / absence patterns for bats, birds, toothed whales as well as simulated data. Our results show that Dollo-CDP can improve upon heuristic search from a single starting tree, often recovering a better scoring tree. Moreover, Dollo-CDP scales to data sets with much larger numbers of taxa than branch-and-bound while still having an optimality guarantee, albeit a more restricted one. Lastly, we show that our algorithm for Dollo parsimony can easily be adapted to Camin-Sokal parsimony but not Fitch parsimony.

A new method for bioassessment of ecosystems with complex communities and environmental gradients

Bioassessment of complex and heterogeneous ecosystems is a challenge when there are multiple, strong, natural environmental gradients; unknown, or spatially varying, mixtures of stressors; and large numbers of taxa with unknown responses to both the environmental gradients and the stressors. Current methods of bioassessment are not designed for use under this set of constraints. To address this gap, we have developed an assessment method appropriate for well-sampled, heterogeneous systems with many taxa. In the bioassessment described below, we model taxa occurrence as a function of natural environmental gradients, then use residual covariance patterns between all pairs of taxa to estimate the impact of human disturbance across sites as a latent construct. The derivation of the method from an underlying causal model allows the metric value at each site and the associated taxa responses to be partitioned into contributions from a set of putative stressors. We apply this method as a case study to the subtidal benthic invertebrate community of Puget Sound, WA (USA) and demonstrate a partial decomposition of the metric values to a set of stressors including sediment organic carbon, nitrogen, metals, and organic pollutants. While this method provides new opportunities to estimate, communicate, and understand the ecological condition of complex, heterogeneous ecosystems, due to the requirement for broad, detailed data to inform its estimates, it will likely be most appropriate for monitoring programs.

Shrinkage-based Random Local Clocks with Scalable Inference.

Molecular clock models undergird modern methods of divergence-time estimation. Local clock models propose that the rate of molecular evolution is constant within phylogenetic subtrees. Current local clock inference procedures exhibit one or more weaknesses, namely they achieve limited scalability to trees with large numbers of taxa, impose model misspecification, or require a priori knowledge of the existence and location of clocks. To overcome these challenges, we present an autocorrelated, Bayesian model of heritable clock rate evolution that leverages heavy-tailed priors with mean zero to shrink increments of change between branch-specific clocks. We further develop an efficient Hamiltonian Monte Carlo sampler that exploits closed form gradient computations to scale our model to large trees. Inference under our shrinkage clock exhibits a speed-up compared to the popular random local clock when estimating branch-specific clock rates on a variety of simulated datasets. This speed-up increases with the size of the problem. We further show our shrinkage clock recovers known local clocks within a rodent and mammalian phylogeny. Finally, in a problem that once appeared computationally impractical, we investigate the heritable clock structure of various surface glycoproteins of influenza A virus in the absence of prior knowledge about clock placement. We implement our shrinkage clock and make it publicly available in the BEAST software package.

An evolution strategy approach for the balanced minimum evolution problem.

The Balanced Minimum Evolution (BME) is a powerful distance based phylogenetic estimation model introduced by Desper and Gascuel and nowadays implemented in popular tools for phylogenetic analyses. It was proven to be computationally less demanding than more sophisticated estimation methods, e.g. maximum likelihood or Bayesian inference while preserving the statistical consistency and the ability to run with almost any kind of data for which a dissimilarity measure is available. BME can be stated in terms of a nonlinear non-convex combinatorial optimization problem, usually referred to as the Balanced Minimum Evolution Problem (BMEP). Currently, the state-of-the-art among approximate methods for the BMEP is represented by FastME (version 2.0), a software which implements several deterministic phylogenetic construction heuristics combined with a local search on specific neighbourhoods derived by classical topological tree rearrangements. These combinations, however, may not guarantee convergence to close-to-optimal solutions to the problem due to the lack of solution space exploration, a phenomenon which is exacerbated when tackling molecular datasets characterized by a large number of taxa. To overcome such convergence issues, in this article, we propose a novel metaheuristic, named PhyloES, which exploits the combination of an exploration phase based on Evolution Strategies, a special type of evolutionary algorithm, with a refinement phase based on two local search algorithms. Extensive computational experiments show that PhyloES consistently outperforms FastME, especially when tackling larger datasets, providing solutions characterized by a shorter tree length but also significantly different from the topological perspective. The software and the data are available at https://github.com/andygaspar/PHYLOES.

The Vascular Plants Diversity of the Batı Akdeniz Agricultural Research Institute Aksu Campus

This floristic research was carried out to determine the floristic composition of the Batı Akdeniz Agricultural Research Institute campus located in Aksu district of Antalya (Türkiye). As a result of the field studies, total 225 plant taxa belonging to 61 families and 182 genera, of which 32 are cultivars, were identified. Only one endemic species was documented in the present study. The families which have the largest number of taxa in the research area are Fabaceae 31 (13.8%), Asteraceae 26 (11.6%), and Poaceae 18 (8.0%). In terms of phytogeographic region, taxa with Mediterranean (25.5%) and multi-regional elements or phytogeographically unknown (72.6%) are abundant. The biological spectrum of the flora according to Raunkiaer life forms shows that Theropyhtes (49.8%) are predominant.

Evolution of brachiopod symbiosis in the early Paleozoic

ABSTRACT The evolution of brachiopod symbiosis is closely tied to the evolution of brachiopod faunas and their partner groups during the early Palaeozoic. Brachiopod groups with a larger number of taxa had more symbiotic associations, and there was no specific group that was more prone to symbiosis during this time interval. The first symbiotic associations appeared soon after the emergence of certain brachiopod groups, with Cambrian brachiopods partnering with typical representatives of the Cambrian fauna. Bryozoans and tentaculitoid tubeworms, which became important partners during the Ordovician and Silurian, first diversified in the Ordovician. The gradual decrease in the number of brachiopod partner groups from the Cambrian to the Silurian was likely due to specialisation. However, the number of symbiotic associations did not increase faster than the number of brachiopod taxa. The GOBE-induced diversification of brachiopod taxa did not lead to an escalation in symbiotic relationships. Symbiotic associations involving brachiopods continued after the end-Ordovician mass extinction. Although early Palaeozoic brachiopods were vulnerable to kleptoparasites, the harm caused by these parasites was not enough to drive their associated brachiopods to extinction.

Characterization of Mediterranean endemics in the Egyptian flora

The Mediterranean Basin is the world’s second richest hotspot, and one of the most important locations on the planet for endemic taxa. However, there is no available up-to-date list of Mediterranean endemics. Available data are frequently insufficient or outdated. Therefore, this study aimed at delimiting the Mediterranean floristic region in Egypt, screening its Mediterranean endemics, and determining their habitats, life forms, flowering periods, dispersal types and phyto-geographical distribution. From a list of 275 Mediterranean endemic taxa in Egypt compiled from literature, this study reduced it to 57 taxa (including species, subspecies and varieties; 20.7%) belonging to 46 genera and 22 families. Fifteen major habitats harbored Mediterranean endemics in Egypt, with coastal dunes (17 taxa = 29.8%) and non-saline depressions (16 taxa = 28.1%) being the most represented. Moreover, the Mareotis (west) subsector was the richest (46 taxa = 80.7%). The largest number of taxa was recorded in North African sub-region (52 taxa = 91.2%), followed by Eastern (levant) sub-region (36 taxa = 63.2%). Therophytes were the most recorded life form, while ballochory was the most represented dispersal type. In conclusion, it is crucial to shed the light on Mediterranean endemics and provide an up-to-date documented database to help future management plan that support their conservation and sustainable use.

Dendroflora of the BNAU botanical garden and the prospects for its enrichment in connection with the development of the territory as an object of the nature reserve fund

It is shown that the existing dendroflora of the botanical garden of the BSNA is the basis for providing practical training for students of specialties 206 – Horticulture and 205 – Forestry, as well as for conducting scientific research on issues of dendrology, the introduction of ornamental plants, and the development of practical recommendations for the creation of horticulture objects in the conditions of the forest-steppe of Ukraine. The history of the creation of botanical gardens of Ukraine at educational institutions, their role in the development of botanical science, and cognitive value for the training of specialists in natural sciences, as well as their modern aesthetic, educational and environmental role are analyzed. The history of the formation of the biostationary (Botanical Garden) of the BNAU and the formation of its collections is high-lighted. The taxonomic composition, life forms, origin and decorative qualities of woody plants growing in the BNAU Botanical Garden are analyzed. It has been established that currently the dendrocollection of the BNAU Botanical Garden contains 1471 trees, shrubs and vines, which belong to 211 taxa belonging to two divisions of the Pinophyta and Magnoliophyta, 8 subclasses, 27 orders, 35 families, 68 genera. The gymnosperms are represented by one class, 3 orders, 3 families, 10 genera, 23 species and 16 cultivars. From the Pinophyta, the largest number of species (13) and cultivars (19) is united by the family Cupresaceae F. Neger, followed by the family Pianaceae with 13 species and 6 cultivars. From the Magnoliophyta division, the largest number of taxa is represented by the Rosaceae family – 15 genera, 31 species, 2 ornamental forms and 16 cultivars. The second place in terms of representation of genera is occupied by the family Fabaceae Lindl., which is represented in the botanical garden by species from 5 genera. The prospects for enriching the collections of woody plants are revealed, taking into account the reorganization of the biostationary into the BNAU Botanical Garden and the development of its territory as a nature reserve, including further expansion of the collections of woody plants of the Pinophyta and Magnoliophyta departments by representatives of families that are currently absent in the collection, as well as highly decorative species and cultivars that are promising in modern landscaping. The basic principle of organization of the existing and new territory of the Botanical Garden is the formation of collections on a systematic basis, which will allow to use the existing plantings as a basis and supplement them with new taxa. Key words: botanical garden, species, tree, life form, viability, collection, shrub, cultivar, taxon.

New TNT routines for parallel computing with MPI

Phylogenetic inference, which involves time-consuming calculations, is a field where parallelization can speed up the resolution of many problems. TNT (a widely used program for phylogenetic analysis under parsimony) allows parallelization under the PVM system (Parallel Virtual Machine). However, as the basic aspects of the implementation remain unpublished, few studies have taken advantage of the parallelization routines of TNT. In addition, the PVM system is deprecated by many system administrators. One of the most common standards for high performance computing is now MPI (Message Passing Interface). To facilitate the use of the parallel analyses offered by TNT, this paper describes the basic aspects of the implementation, as well as a port of the parallelization interface of TNT into MPI. The use of the new routines is illustrated by reanalysis of seven significant datasets, either recent phylogenomic datasets with many characters (up to 2,509,064 characters) or datasets with large numbers of taxa (up to 13,921 taxa). Versions of TNT including the MPI functionality are available at: http://www.lillo.org.ar/phylogeny/tnt/.

Fritillaria kordestanica (Liliaceae), a new species from western Iran

Fritillaria Linnaeus (1753: 303; Liliaceae) comprises about 170 species of geophytic perennials (Rix 2019) occurring in most temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere (Tomović et al. 2007, Hill 2014, Day et al. 2014). The largest number of taxa has been found in Turkey (46 species) and Greece (31 taxa, 26 species and five subspecies).

Molecular Mechanism Underlying Symptom Development in Phytoplasma Associated Diseases - The Key Players and their Role

Phytoplasma, plant pathogenic Mollicutes that have a trans-kingdom life cycle, are insect transmittedand have been found to be associated with yield affecting traits in a large number of taxa. Many peculiar symptoms observed in the host taxa are often results of dramatic alterations in the normal development program that are generally controlled at the meristematic regions located in the shoot apices. Phytoplasma being vasculature limited are thus able to bring about genetic reprogramming in the regions of host plant that are far removed from their natural niche namely sieve elements of the phloem. Several proteins secreted by phytoplasma in the host plants have been identified and termed as effector molecules namely SAP54, SAP11, TENGU, SAP21 etc. that enable the colonisation, survival, spread of phytoplasma and also bring about dramatic alterations in the host plant. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying these peculiar phenomena are far from understood and remain a challenging area for the phytoplasma biologists. A thorough understanding of the processes involved is needed to provide platforms for developing control measures for phytoplasma associated diseases that will also enhance basic understanding on the plant developmental programs affected.

Diversity and habitat preferences of benthic diatoms from South Bay (Livingston Island, Antarctica)

Background and aims – Despite a long research history, knowledge of Antarctic marine benthic diatoms is fragmentary. This study reports on marine benthic diatoms from South Bay, Livingston Island, focusing on diatoms living on hard substrata, and species distribution across different coastal habitats.Material and methods – Samples were collected from tidal pools (19), intertidal cobbles (9), artificial substrata installed at various depths (10), coastal rocks (2), and bottom sediments at depths > 20 m (2). Species identifications and community analyses were done using LM with additional information obtained using SEM. nMDS based on diatom abundance data was applied to display differences between the samples by habitat/substratum type and sampling month. The significance of the habitat/substratum type and sampling month on diatom communities was checked with PERMANOVA. Similarity/dissimilarity within and between sample groups and their contributing species were explored with SIMPER.Key results – In total, 133 diatom taxa were recorded, of which 110 are benthic. A large number of taxa could not be certainly identified. Taxonomic remarks and ecology and distribution data for some rarely reported species with convoluted taxonomic and nomenclatural histories are given. One new combination is proposed. Diatom communities were influenced by the habitat/substratum type, but not by seasonality. Significant differences existed between communities in tidal pools and those on cobbles, artificial substrata, and sediments, and between those on sediments and artificial substrata. Navicula aff. perminuta dominated on cobbles and often on artificial substrata. Species forming mucilage tubes, tree-like colonies, and chains of cells embedded in mucilage were restricted to tidal pools.Conclusion – Benthic diatom communities from South Bay are highly diverse and species show distinct distributions in the coastal habitats, but the scarce studies and often confusing nomenclature history of the taxa make their identification challenging, and potentially common species for the region remain unknown.

Narrowly distributed taxa are disproportionately informative for conservation planning

Biological atlas data can be used as inputs into conservation decision-making, yet atlases are sometimes infrequently updated, which can be problematic when the distribution of species is changing rapidly. Despite this, we have a poor understanding of strategies for efficiently updating biological atlas data. Using atlases of the distributions of 1630 threatened plant taxa, we quantitatively compared the informativeness of narrowly distributed and widespread taxa in identifying areas that meet taxon-specific conservation targets, and also measured the cost-efficiency of meeting those targets. We also explored the underlying mechanisms of the informativeness of narrowly distributed taxa. Overall, narrowly distributed taxa are far more informative than widespread taxa for identifying areas that efficiently meet conservation targets, while their informativeness for identifying cost-efficient areas varied depending on the type of conservation target. Narrowly distributed taxa are informative mainly because their distributions disproportionately capture areas that are either relatively taxon rich or taxon poor, and because of larger number of taxa captured with given number of records. Where resources for updating biological data are limited, a focus on areas supporting many narrowly distributed taxa could benefit conservation planning.

Development and Evolution of Unisexual Flowers: A Review.

The development of unisexual flowers has been described in a large number of taxa, sampling the diversity of floral phenotypes and sexual systems observed in extant angiosperms, in studies focusing on floral ontogeny, on the evo-devo of unisexuality, or on the genetic and chromosomal bases of unisexuality. We review here such developmental studies, aiming at characterizing the diversity of ontogenic pathways leading to functionally unisexual flowers. In addition, we present for the first time and in a two-dimensional morphospace a quantitative description of the developmental rate of the sexual organs in functionally unisexual flowers, in a non-exhaustive sampling of angiosperms with contrasted floral morphologies. Eventually, recommendations are provided to help plant evo-devo researchers and botanists addressing macroevolutionary and ecological issues to more precisely select the taxa, the biological material, or the developmental stages to be investigated.

Taksonomsko-ekološka analiza ruderalne flore grada Kičeva (Severna Makedonija)

Ruderal flora and vegetation is one of the youngest and most dynamic floristic-vegetation complexes. The anthropogenic conditionality, pronounced dynamism, microfragmentation in its distribution and great morpho-anatomical variability of its cenobionts are its important characteristics. The floristic composition and development stage of the ruderal flora and vegetation are important data in observing the consequences of increasingly intensifying processes of urbanization. Floristic studies of the ruderal flora in the territory of the town Kičevo, have established the presence of 290 taxa of vascular plants, classfied into 207 genera, 58 families and 3 classes.The most represented taxa in the ruderal flora of Kičevo are from the most numerous families in the flora of North Macedonia: Asteraceae (41), Poaceae (26), and Fabaceae (25). A total of eighteen genera with three or more taxa were recorded, and the genera with the largest number of taxa are: Vicia (6), Trifolium (5), Geranium, Veronica, Euphorbia, Rumex, Linaria and Ranunculus (4). Majority of the species which belong to these genera are characteristic indicators of tertiary ruderal vegetation. Analysis of the representation of certain life forms has determined the hemicryptophyto-therophite character of the ruderal flora (H= 43.10%, T= 36.55%). The subdominant presence of therophytes is directly correlated with the instability of the ruderal habitats caused by the anthropogenic activities.The analysis of ecological indices for five main ecological factors (light, temperature, humidity, soil reaction and nutritiens) has shown dominance of plants preferring semi-open to open habitats, mesothermal and thermophylic habitats (regarding their termal regime), submesophyte to subxerophyte habitats (regarding their water regime), mostly neutral to low alkaline soil reaction and oligo-mesotrophic habitats, regarding their nutritien status. Comparing the ruderal flora of Kičevo with other similar sized cities in the region (Žabljak, Loznica, Smederevska Palanka and Kosovska Mitrovica), we found the highest index of similarity (0.81) between the cities of Kičevo and Kosovska Mitrovica.

A rich fading biocultural diversity? A review of traditional herbal teas used by minorities in the Balkans

Ethnobotanical studies focusing on medicinal plant ingredients have always been conducted with the aim of protecting the local ecological knowledge (LEK) of these natural resources. In the globalized world, the rapid loss of biodiversity and cultural and linguistic homogenization have threatened the survival of the planet, together with leading us towards an extinction crisis. In this extreme situation, LEK is also facing serious challenges, especially that of minorities where the pressure is manifold. A number of studies have been carried out among minority groups in recent times, and scientists are attempting to devise solid policy recommendations to celebrate their LEK in future development programs. In this regard, the current review was planned to explore the diversity of LEK on herbal teas held by minority groups in the Balkans to mobilize policymakers to help foster cultural resilience in the region. We reviewed eleven different ethnobotanical studies conducted in the Balkan region, which recorded 162 plants used in herbal teas for medicinal and recreational purposes. The dominant botanical families, represented by a large number of taxa, were Lamiaceae, Rosaceae, and Asteraceae. The highest number of use reports was recorded for the Rosaceae family. Most of these herbal ingredients were used to treat digestive problems. Traditional ethnobotanical knowledge is highly vulnerable to change, and, therefore, cultural heritage should be reinforced through future educational programs. Considering the diversity of the gathered data on herbal teas, we argue that local wisdom on natural resources should be exploited in future conservation strategies. It is worth mentioning that the folk therapeutic uses of the quoted medicinal plants are very sensitive to change when exposed to scholarly or written knowledge, sometimes also osmotically mixing with that. The article is a useful compendium for medical plant scholars to tackle the issue of biodiversity loss and promote environmental and social sustainability in the region.

The diversity and distribution of flora of the island of Zlarin (Northern Dalmatia)

The flora of the island of Zlarin was studied in 2019 and mapped using the Central European grid (MTB fields), the area studied consisting of nine MTB 1/64 fields. Altogether 576 vascular plant taxa (532 species and 44 subspecies) were identified, out of which there were 126 newly recorded, 450 previously recorded and confirmed, while 153 taxa from previous authors were not confirmed. In total, 730 taxa are currently recorded on the island of Zlarin. Among these, 580 taxa are indigenous, 147 cultivated and 23 listed as invasive in Croatia. Cultivated and adventitious plants were not included in the analysis of families and life forms. The largest number of taxa was attributed to the families Compositae (13.89%), Fabaceae (12.01%) and Poaceae (10.98%). Along with the domination of therophytes, the results of the phytogeographical analysis show a dominance of the Mediterranean floral element, indicating the character of the flora. Altogether 13 endemic, 44 endangered and 42 strictly protected indigenous species and subspecies are currently recorded on the island. The highest plant richness was observed in fields with higher habitat diversity and in fields with olive groves maintained by mowing. Moderate human impact and habitat diversity are crucial for the increase in floristic diversity on small islands and are much more important than the size of the island itself.