Extra-Mediterranean refugia: The rule and not the exception?

• Published in: Frontiers in Zoology
• Main Authors: Schmitt, Thomas, Varga, Zoltán
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: BioMed Central 2012
• Subjects: Review; Arctic
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462695; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22953783; https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-9-22

Some decades ago, biogeographers distinguished three major faunal types of high importance for Europe: (i) Mediterranean elements with exclusive glacial survival in the Mediterranean refugia, (ii) Siberian elements with glacial refugia in the eastern Palearctic and only postglacial expansion to Europe and (iii) arctic and/or alpine elements with large zonal distributions in the periglacial areas and postglacial retreat to the North and/or into the high mountain systems. Genetic analyses have unravelled numerous additional refugia both of continental and Mediterranean species, thus strongly modifying the biogeographical view of Europe. This modified notion is particularly true for the so-called Siberian species, which in many cases have not immigrated into Europe during the postglacial period, but most likely have survived the last, or even several glacial phases, in extra-Mediterranean refugia in some climatically favourable but geographically limited areas of southern Central and Eastern Europe. Recently, genetic analyses revealed that typical Mediterranean species have also survived the Last Glacial Maximum in cryptic northern refugia (e.g. in the Carpathians or even north of the Alps) in addition to their Mediterranean refuge areas.