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Biodiversity
of the Baltic postglacial ecosystems:
CHANGES IN TIME AND SPACE
Vytautas Kontrimavičius
Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
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Pleistocene glaciations in the northern hemisphere
The gray areas represent ice shields
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Approximate appearance of Bering Land Bridge during late Pleistocene time (after Rausch, 1994)
The dotted areas – ice
The white areas – land
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Eastern Palearctic Biodiversity
• Ecosystems of the Eastern Palearctic
– have not been covered with Pleistocene glaciations
– therefore their biodiversity is much higher than biodiversity of the Western Palearctic (including European) ecosystems
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Western Palearctic Biodiversity
• Postglacial ecosystems of Western Palearctic– are relatively species-poor
– are formed continuously up to now due to
natural expansion of species ranges
anthropogenic transfer
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Baltic Biodiversity
• Feature of ecosystems of the Baltic region:
– south-western distribution limit of northern and Siberian species of Taiga and Tundra biomes
– north-eastern distribution limit of Western-European species of deciduous forest biome
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The tundra birch(Betula nana)
Europeanhornbeam(Carpinus betulus)
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Cloudberry(Rubus chamaemorus)
Mistletoe(Viscum album)
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Mountain hare (Lepus timidus)
Fat dormouse (Glis glis)
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Pond turtle (Emys orbicularis)
Whitefish:Coregonus lavaretus
Coregonus albula
Tree frog (Hyla arborea)
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Baltic Biodiversity
• Combination of northern and southern species in ecosystems– increases their stability in variable
seasonal climate
however– may cause large-scale changes
(extinctions, migrations) in case of long-term climate change
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Baltic Biodiversity
• Molecular methods in ecology provided the new possibilities:– study of ecosystem structure– study of population structure within species
• They revealed the genetic heterogeneity of populations in the Baltic region
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Microtus agrestis sampling sites
Southern
Western
Eastern
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Microtus agrestis postglacial expansion
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Microtus agrestis similarity of populations
Southern
Western
Eastern
Lithuania
Lithuania
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• The listed data on the population structure of the Baltic region seem to be the only available up to now.
• Therefore, the Baltic region of Europe remains one of the least researched in the aspect of phylogeography
Baltic Biodiversity
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• The latest data – disprove the hypothesis of Hewitt (1999) that
the postglacial biota of Europe has been mainly formed by the populations of the southern refugia
– reveal that the northern Europe, including the Baltic region, has been colonized by migration from remote eastern populations of southern Siberia
Baltic Biodiversity
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• The questions solved by the molecular ecology:
Population structureGenetic divergenceHybrid zonesSpeciationSibling speciesIntraspecific systematics
Molecular ecology
• They all are questions of biodiversity
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• Most intensive research conducted during last 15 years. Publications:
Molecular EcologyMolecular Biology and EvolutionMolecular Phylogenetics and EvolutionGeneticsMolekulyarnaya Biologiya
etc.
Molecular ecology
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• In Lithuania, there were little possibilities to conduct molecular ecology research due to economic reasons,
however, recently
Molecular ecology
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• a laboratory of molecular ecology has been equipped in the Institute of Ecology of Vilnius University
• a field material has been collected for the phylogeographic studies of
ProtistaVermesMolluscaInsectaAvesMammalia
Molecular ecology in Lithuania
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Molecular ecology in Lithuania
• The main research trends:
structure of populations
intra-specific hybrid zones
significance of the European and Siberian refugia in the formation of post-glacial biota of Northern Europe
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Thank you for attention!