Faculty of Sciences, Applied Ecology Research Center, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, 5-7 Raţiu Street, 550012, Sibiu, Romania.
Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, UK.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jan 16;14(1):1392. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-51870-6.
The land snail faunas of limestone gorges of Romanian Carpathians were sampled to test the effect of geographic and environmental factors on the malacofauna richness and composition. A total of 134 sites within 28 limestone gorges were surveyed during 2011-2019 using a combined strategy of visual search and litter/topsoil analysis. Environmental variables such as geographic location, altitude, climate, microhabitat type, dominant vegetation, tree cover and width of the gorge were recorded to detect the relationship with species richness and composition. While the numbers of species, their identities and their abundance varied greatly among samples, both presence and absence data and quantitative multivariate analyses showed that region and climate or altitude (both strongly associated with region) accounted for far more variation than differences in tree cover and dominant microhabitat. Nevertheless, the effects of different habitat preferences were evident. The mixture of species with very restricted ranges within this Pleistocene refugium and those that have spread widely during the Holocene raise questions about the meaning of region when related to local richness and composition.
对罗马尼亚喀尔巴阡山脉石灰岩峡谷中的陆地蜗牛群进行了采样，以检验地理和环境因素对软体动物丰富度和组成的影响。2011 年至 2019 年期间，使用视觉搜索和凋落物/表土分析相结合的策略，对 28 个石灰岩峡谷中的 134 个地点进行了调查。记录了地理位置、海拔、气候、小生境类型、优势植被、树冠覆盖和峡谷宽度等环境变量，以检测与物种丰富度和组成的关系。虽然物种的数量、身份和丰度在样本之间差异很大，但存在和缺失数据以及定量多元分析表明，区域和气候或海拔（与区域强烈相关）解释了更多的变异，而树冠覆盖和主要小生境的差异则较小。尽管如此，不同生境偏好的影响是明显的。在这个更新世避难所中，有非常局限分布范围的物种与那些在全新世广泛扩散的物种混合在一起，这使得与局部丰富度和组成相关的“区域”的含义变得复杂。
