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First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds

This work represents the first study of the floristic diversity on Bulgaria’s ancient mounds. The objective of this research was to assess the importance of the mounds for the preservation of the native vascular and cryptogam flora. Our sampling design included 111 ancient mounds distributed through...

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Autores principales: Apostolova, Iva, Sopotlieva, Desislava, Valcheva, Magdalena, Ganeva, Anna, Shivarov, Veselin, Velev, Nikolay, Vassilev, Kiril, Terziyska, Tsvetelina, Nekhrizov, Georgi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912620/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35270175
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11050705
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author Apostolova, Iva
Sopotlieva, Desislava
Valcheva, Magdalena
Ganeva, Anna
Shivarov, Veselin
Velev, Nikolay
Vassilev, Kiril
Terziyska, Tsvetelina
Nekhrizov, Georgi
author_facet Apostolova, Iva
Sopotlieva, Desislava
Valcheva, Magdalena
Ganeva, Anna
Shivarov, Veselin
Velev, Nikolay
Vassilev, Kiril
Terziyska, Tsvetelina
Nekhrizov, Georgi
author_sort Apostolova, Iva
collection PubMed
description This work represents the first study of the floristic diversity on Bulgaria’s ancient mounds. The objective of this research was to assess the importance of the mounds for the preservation of the native vascular and cryptogam flora. Our sampling design included 111 ancient mounds distributed throughout the country. We recorded a total of 1059 vascular plants, 58 bryophytes and 61 lichen taxa. Despite their small area, the mounds were shown to preserve nearly a quarter of the Bulgarian flora. The vegetation cover on the mounds included 61% perennials indicating a long-term persistence and stability. The majority (98%) of the established vascular plants were native species. Although the conservation significance of the vascular plant species were not common, we recorded 2 critically endangered, 9 endangered and 14 Balkan endemics during the present study. The lichen Arthopyrenia salicis was recorded for the first time in Bulgaria and a new locality of the rare bryophyte Ceratodon conicus was discovered. The established compositional difference between plots from the northern and southern slopes of the mounds (88.95%) is a testament to the high local habitat diversity. The prevalence of species characteristic for Festuco-Brometea suggests that the mounds preserve fragments of native grasslands and steppes. The variation in cover of agricultural and other human modified areas in the mounds’ immediate surroundings did not substantially affect their species richness. We argue that the ancient mounds should be taken into consideration in future green space planning.
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spelling pubmed-89126202022-03-11 First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds Apostolova, Iva Sopotlieva, Desislava Valcheva, Magdalena Ganeva, Anna Shivarov, Veselin Velev, Nikolay Vassilev, Kiril Terziyska, Tsvetelina Nekhrizov, Georgi Plants (Basel) Article This work represents the first study of the floristic diversity on Bulgaria’s ancient mounds. The objective of this research was to assess the importance of the mounds for the preservation of the native vascular and cryptogam flora. Our sampling design included 111 ancient mounds distributed throughout the country. We recorded a total of 1059 vascular plants, 58 bryophytes and 61 lichen taxa. Despite their small area, the mounds were shown to preserve nearly a quarter of the Bulgarian flora. The vegetation cover on the mounds included 61% perennials indicating a long-term persistence and stability. The majority (98%) of the established vascular plants were native species. Although the conservation significance of the vascular plant species were not common, we recorded 2 critically endangered, 9 endangered and 14 Balkan endemics during the present study. The lichen Arthopyrenia salicis was recorded for the first time in Bulgaria and a new locality of the rare bryophyte Ceratodon conicus was discovered. The established compositional difference between plots from the northern and southern slopes of the mounds (88.95%) is a testament to the high local habitat diversity. The prevalence of species characteristic for Festuco-Brometea suggests that the mounds preserve fragments of native grasslands and steppes. The variation in cover of agricultural and other human modified areas in the mounds’ immediate surroundings did not substantially affect their species richness. We argue that the ancient mounds should be taken into consideration in future green space planning. MDPI 2022-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8912620/ /pubmed/35270175 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11050705 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Apostolova, Iva
Sopotlieva, Desislava
Valcheva, Magdalena
Ganeva, Anna
Shivarov, Veselin
Velev, Nikolay
Vassilev, Kiril
Terziyska, Tsvetelina
Nekhrizov, Georgi
First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title_full First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title_fullStr First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title_full_unstemmed First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title_short First Survey of the Vascular and Cryptogam Flora on Bulgaria’s Ancient Mounds
title_sort first survey of the vascular and cryptogam flora on bulgaria’s ancient mounds
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912620/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35270175
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11050705
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