Glacial relic

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The leading species of the late Pleistocene climate epoch ( Dryas period ) is the eponymous white silver arum ( Dryas octopetala ). The area of ​​distribution of the Ice Age relic shows a wide gap between the main areas in the Alps and Scandinavia.

As glacial relicts ( Latin glacies "ice"; glacial relics ) refers to cold and often light-loving plants and animals whose original center of distribution in the Arctic lay regions or in the high mountains, but which during the cold periods in the Pleistocene deeper from their original distribution areas in or more southerly regions could spread. During the subsequent warming they had to retreat through vertical migration to climatically cooler locations, for example in the mountains. The different populations were thereby biogeographically separated from one another; Due to the resulting disjunction, the preserved sub-areas form an arcto-alpine group, the individual species of which belong to four area types. Through the isolation, the individual populations can develop apart genetically.

Especially for alpine plant and animal species, the descent from isolated high altitudes often meant that their range could increase during this time, as they could expand over wide areas in the plains. In the event of a subsequent warming, they could either retreat to new, previously unpopulated, high-altitude locations or stay at individual, suitable locations. Vividly speaking, they are species that have survived in the warm sea on cold islands.

A well-studied glacial relic is the white silver arum ( Dryas octopetala ), the main species of the Dryas flora , which was particularly dominant in Europe during the Younger Dryas Period at the end of the last Ice Age . Saxifraga nivalis and Pedicularis sudetica both actually have a purely Arctic distribution area ( Saxifraga nivalis e.g. on Spitzbergen , Pedicularis sudetica e.g. in northern Canada ), but are also known as relics from the Giant Mountains . The cloudberry ( Rubus chamaemorus ) is a species of the boreal zone with two locations in northern Germany. A first known example of a glacial relic in the Pyrenees is the Pyrenees mountain newt ( Calotriton asper ).

Examples

The occurrences of the following examples as (possible) relics are explained in the respective article.

flora
fauna

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladmir Stevanović, Snežana Vukojičić, Jasmina Šinžar-Sekulić, Maja Lazarević, Gordana Tomović, Kit Tan: Distribution and diversity of Arctic-Alpine species in the Balkans . Plant Systematics and Evolution, December 2009, 283.219, (PDF)
  2. ↑ Saxifraga nivalis L. = Micranthes nivalis The Flora of Svalbard (accessed December 25, 2015)
  3. ↑ SG Aiken, MJ Dallwitz, LL Consaul, CL McJannet, LJ Gillespie, RL Boles, GW Argus, JM Gillett, PJ Scott, R. Elven, MC LeBlanc, AK Brysting and H. Solstad: Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Descriptions , Illustrations, Identification, and Information Retrieval. From: 1999; Pedicularis sudetica Willd. Online version from May 2011 (accessed December 25, 2015)
  4. ↑ Johann Kachler: Encyclopedic Plant Dictionary of all native and foreign vegetables. Printed and published by JP Sollinger, Vienna 1829, p. 187
  5. ^ Johann Gottfried Sommer: The Kingdom of Bohemia presented statistically and topographically. Volume 3, Bidschower Kreis. Verlag der JG Calve'schen Buchhandlung, Prague 1835, pp. 32–33
  6. ↑ Juan Manuel López-García, Hugues-Alexandre Blain, Ethel Allué, Sandra Bañuls, Amelia Bargalló, Patricia Martín, Juan Ignacio Morales, Mireia Pedro, Anna Rodríguez, Alex Solé, F. Xavier Oms: First fossil evidence of an “interglacial refugium ”In the Pyrenean region. In: Naturwissenschaften 97, No. 8, 2010, pp. 753-761, doi: 10.1007 / s00114-010-0695-6 .