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Endemics and their common congener plant species on an East Mediterranean island: a comparative functional trait approach

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Abstract

Understanding evolution and ecology of endemic plants is of great importance for conservation of those rare and endangered species. Pairwise comparisons of plant functional traits could be an adequate method to get insights in evolutionary and ecological processes. We examined whether morphological traits representing competitive ability and habitat specificity differ between endemics and common plants. Therefore, we performed pairwise comparison analyses of 9 plant functional traits in 36 congeneric pairs of endemics and their common congeners on the East Mediterranean island of Cyprus, i.e., the first such study conducted on a Mediterranean island. We found that endemic species prefer higher elevations and more extreme habitats. Endemics were smaller and they had smaller flowers than their common congeners. Common species had higher chromosome numbers than endemic ones. Endemic and common species showed no significant differences in canopy height, inflorescence height, leaf length and width, and flowering period. Our study showed that the situation on a large oceanic island does not differ from results in mainland research areas.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ingo Kowarik (Berlin) who supervised the bachelor thesis of the second author. We would like to acknowledge Sarah Dawson for comments on the manuscript and Carolin Kleinke for graphic revisions. Georgios N. Hadjikyriakou and Charalambos S. Christodoulou (both Cyprus) supported field work and collecting herbarium specimen in Cyprus.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6–8, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    Ralf Hand

  2. Technical University of Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623, Berlin, Germany

    Anita Grossmann

  3. Botanical Garden, University of Potsdam, Maulbeerallee 3, 14469, Potsdam, Germany

    Daniel Lauterbach

  4. Department of Ecology, Ecosystem Science/Plant Ecology, Technical University of Berlin, Rothenburgstr 12, 12165, Berlin, Germany

    Daniel Lauterbach

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  1. Ralf Hand
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  2. Anita Grossmann
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Correspondence to Daniel Lauterbach.

Additional information

Communicated by Timothy Bell.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 List of species origin and voucher numbers (n); (lit) bibliographical reference Meikle (1977, 1985)
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Hand, R., Grossmann, A. & Lauterbach, D. Endemics and their common congener plant species on an East Mediterranean island: a comparative functional trait approach. Plant Ecol 218, 139–150 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11258-016-0673-y

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