Fenu Giuseppe, Lazzaro Lorenzo, Lastrucci Lorenzo, Viciani Daniele
Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, Viale S. Ignazio da Laconi 13, 09123 Cagliari, Italy.
Department of Biology, University of Florence, Via G. La Pira 4, 50121 Florence, Italy.
Plants (Basel). 2022 Feb 28;11(5):653. doi: 10.3390/plants11050653.
Narrow endemic plants constitute a pivotal group for conservation, being often reduced to a small contingent of individuals and frequently threatened. However, effective conservation actions require reliable basic information about distribution range, ecological requirements, and population traits. Nevertheless, such knowledge results are incomplete or even completely missing for some neglected or recently described plants, such as , a thistle exclusive to the N-Apennines (Italy). To fill this gap, all sites where grow were monitored, and data on the site and population traits were collected. Our results indicated that this plant is restricted to 16 scattered sites, varied in surface area and number of individuals. Reproductive and juvenile plants showed to be affected by roughly the same variables, in particular the surface of the site, the slope aspect, and the canopy cover. The narrow ecological niche of was mainly determined by the canopy cover, and where coverage increases, the number of individuals decreases. The individuals only grow at forest edges, where the peculiar ecological conditions are limiting factors for the development of forestry cover; some other factors (i.e., high inclination and instability of the substrate) contribute to limiting the development of forestry vegetation and guarantee the persistence of these ecotones. Despite the great difficulties in accessing the sites where this species grows, this study presents, for the first time, a complete picture of the population and yielded important data to identify effective conservation measures.
狭域特有植物是保护的关键群体，它们的个体数量往往减少到一小部分，且经常受到威胁。然而，有效的保护行动需要有关分布范围、生态需求和种群特征的可靠基础信息。尽管如此，对于一些被忽视或最近才被描述的植物，如一种仅分布于意大利亚平宁山脉北部的蓟类植物，此类知识要么不完整，要么完全缺失。为填补这一空白，对所有生长有该植物的地点进行了监测，并收集了有关地点和种群特征的数据。我们的结果表明，这种植物仅分布于16个分散的地点，这些地点的面积和个体数量各不相同。生殖植株和幼苗受到大致相同变量的影响，特别是地点面积、坡面朝向和树冠覆盖度。该植物狭窄的生态位主要由树冠覆盖度决定，树冠覆盖度增加的地方，个体数量减少。这些个体只生长在森林边缘，那里特殊的生态条件是森林植被发展的限制因素；其他一些因素（如基质的高坡度和不稳定性）也有助于限制森林植被的发展，并保证这些生态交错带的持续存在。尽管进入该物种生长地点存在很大困难，但本研究首次呈现了该植物种群的全貌，并提供了重要数据以确定有效的保护措施。
