Projekt

Zur Projekt-Website

The distribution of species today differs markedly from that during the ice ages. In temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere we most often assume that species occurred further south during the glacial maxima and subsequently dispersed to the north. In Europe, the focus of analyses on the distribution in the past has focused on the three southern peninsulas of Europe. Frequently, reports also considered cryptic northern refugia (i.e. those not supported by fossil evidence). There are, however, few studies that intensively investigated the possible existence of refugia further east, in Eastern Europe, the Urals and Siberia and their importance for the re-colonization of Central and northern Europe. For steppe species, the project consortium has investigated such a possibility in the previous project, which highlighted the diversity in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia. In the project proposed here, the importance of eastern European and Siberian regions for forest species will be investigated. Using the two species Veronica officinalis and V. chamaedrys the consortium wants to investigate patterns of intraspecific diversification on the genetic and morphological level. By means of analysis of SNP-data and distribution of genetic diversity, the differentiation in macro- and micromorphological characters and the modelling of ecological niches, it is aimed to find out where the species survived the ice age glaciations. The analyses allow the detection of populations of special importance based on genetic distinction and therefore in need of special conservation attention. Apart from this central aspect, the consortium will use this project to investigate the consequences of the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl (1986) and Kyshtym (1957) for these two species. The variation in the species found at these sites will be studied in relation to the complete variation in the species across Eurasia.

• Prof. Dr. Dirk Albach

  Universität Oldenburg
  Fakultät für Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften
  Institut für Biologie und Umweltwissenschaften
  Oldenburg
  

• Prof. Dr. Sergei Mosyakin

  National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
  M.G. Kholodny Institute of Botany
  Kiev
  Ukraine
  

• Dr. Petr Kosachev

  Staatliche Altai-Universität
  Fakultät für Biologie
  Barnaul
  Russland