Aquatic Plant Diversity in Italy: Distribution, Drivers and Strategic Conservation Actions.

ABSTRACT: Italy is recognized as one of the prominent hot spot areas for plant diversity at regional and global scale, hosting a rich range of ecosystems and habitat types. This is especially true considering aquatic habitats, which represent a major portion of the total water surfaces in the Mediterranean region. Nevertheless, only a scant attention was paid to clarify the species richness of aquatic plant and its contribution to the total diversity at the country scale, despite such plants are seriously threatened at multiple scales. This paper provided the first comprehensive inventory of aquatic plants at the whole country scale, collecting data on species' distribution, trends, and explanatory determinants of species richness. We confirmed the key contribution of Italy to the regional and globa

SUBMITTER: Bolpagni R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5816802 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature