Late Quaternary range shifts of marcescent oaks unveil the dynamics of a major biogeographic transition in southern Europe.

ABSTRACT: Marcescent forests are ecotones distributed across southern Europe that host increased levels of biodiversity but their persistence is threatened by global change. Here we study the range dynamics of these forests in the Iberian Peninsula (IP) during the Late Quaternary, a period of profound climate and anthropic changes. We modeled and compared the distribution of eight oak taxa for the present and two paleoclimatic environments, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~ 21 kya) and the Mid-Holocene (MH, ~ 6 kya). Presence records were combined with bioclimatic and topographic data in an ensemble modelling framework to obtain spatial projections for present and past conditions across taxa. Substantial distribution shifts were projected between the three studied periods, that were explained by prec

SUBMITTER: Vila-Vicosa C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7726089 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature