Rare plant communities of the Vis Archipelago (Croatia)

ABSTRACT

The Dalmatian coast (Croatia) represents the second largest Archipelago within the Mediterranean area and contributes considerably to the Mediterranean biodiversity. The islands of the Vis Archipelago, in particular, contain an exceptional richness of endemic and rare plant taxa. The aim of this paper is to provide a phytosociological description of the rare plants communities occurring in the Vis Archipelago and define their syntaxonomic position in the Mediterranean context. A data-set consisting of 90 phytosociological relevés was subjected to cluster analysis (Ward’s method on a Chord distance matrix) and non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination. The Indicator Species Analysis was used to identify the diagnostic taxa of the main clusters of relevés. The occurrence of the Anthyllidion barbae-jovis in Croatia was documented with new relevés. Four new associations of the Crithmo-Staticetalia and four further new ones of the Helichrysetalia italici were described for the first time. A endemic alliance to the Vis archipelago (Croatia) and Tremiti islands (Italy), Capparo orientalis-Aurinion leucadeae, was validated in order to include plant communities of coastal rocky cliffs which are not directly exposed to sea-borne salt-spray but are still under the influence of sea-born salt due to the intense offing storms, in the middle Adriatic. The results were discussed in the light of the European syntaxonomic framework of the EuroVegChecklist. Several syntaxonomic interpretative problems regarding the interface between the Helichrysetalia italici and the Centaureo-Campanuletalia have arisen and they have been only partially solved with the validation of the Capparo-Aurinion. New investigations are required on this topic.

KEYWORDS:

• Cliff diversity
• coastal habitat
• Crithmo-Staticetea
• endemic plants
• endangered taxa
• Mediterranean islands
• salt-sprayed vegetation
• syntaxonomy

Acknowledgments

Many thanks are due to S. Latham for improving the English and G. Mazziconi (IAC-CNR Library) for helping us in finding references. Authors thank the Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service for providing the meteorological data from the Komiža station, the island of Vis. Authors also thank Frédéric Médail, another anonymous referee and the Editor-in-Chief, Sophie Nadot, for their useful suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contribution statement

M.T. and N.J. conceived and planned the research. M.T. led the writing; M.T., N.J. and S.B. made the phytosociological relevés in the Vis Archipelago whereas M.T. and F.S.D. made the relevés in the Tremiti Archipelago. All the authors critically revised the manuscript.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Massimo Terzi

Massimo Terzi is a research scientist at the Institute of Bioscience and Bioresources of the National Council of Research of Italy. His research interests are in Phytosociology, Plant Ecology and Biodiversity Conservation fields.

Sandro Bogdanović

Sandro Bogdanović is Associate Professor and curator of ZAGR herbarium collection at the Department of Agricultural Botany, Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb (Croatia). His main research interests are plant taxonomy and systematics, botanical nomenclature, flora of Croatia, flora of the Balkan Peninsula and Mediterranean. S.B. is author of numerous scientific publications in national and international journals and coauthor of four scientific books. He is specialist of the genus Allium, Campanula and Limonium. S.B. is a member of the Croatian Botanical Society for more than a decade and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of the Croatian Botanical Society, as well as Subject Editor of the journal Acta Botanica Croatica.

Francesco Saverio D’Amico

Francesco Saverio D’Amico is a research and aggregate professor of Department of Biology, “Aldo Moro” University in Bari (Italy). The author’s interests cover taxonomy and ecology of vascular plants.

Nenad Jasprica

Nenad Jasprica is a botanist and senior researcher at the Dubrovnik Institute for Marine and Coastal Research (Croatia). He has written over 150 articles and has been working on ecology, phytosociology and biodiversity conservation. He is the president of the Croatian Botanical Society which organizes meetings on plant taxonomy, ecology and related subjects. Over the last 25 years, he has teaching numerous courses on plant ecology.