Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae DOI: 10.5586/asbp.3488 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Publication history Received: 2015-10-12 Accepted: 2016-02-12 Demographic responses of boreal-montane Published: 2016-03-31 orchid Malaxis monophyllos (L.) Sw. Handling editor Zygmunt Dajdok, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of populations to contrasting environmental Wrocław, Poland conditions Authors’ contributions EJ: research designing, conducting field study, analyzing data, writing the Edyta Jermakowicz*, Emilia Brzosko manuscript; EB: research Institute of Biology, University of Białystok, K. Ciołkowskiego 1j, 15-245 Białystok, Poland designing, writing the manuscript, advising * Corresponding author. Email:
[email protected] Funding The presented work forms Abstract part of a project financially supported by a grant from In an age of changes in species’ geographical ranges, compounded by climatic and the Polish Ministry of Science anthropogenic impacts, it become important to know which processes and factors and Higher Education (NN304 influence plant populations and their persistence in the long term. 606038). EJ is a beneficiary Here we investigated dynamic and fitness components in twelve populations of of the project “Scholarships for PhD students of Podlaskie Malaxis monophyllos (L.) Sw., situated in different geographical (regions) and eco- Province” co-financed by the logical (type of habitat) units. Although M. monophyllos is a rare species, character- European Social Fund, the Polish ized by highly fragmented, boreal-montane distribution range, in last few decades Government, and Podlaskie it successfully colonized secondary habitats in Polish uplands. Our results indicate Province. that M. monophyllos is represented mainly by small populations, which annual spa- Competing interests tial and temporal changes might be very high, what affects the ephemeral character No competing interests have of these populations, regardless of the region and type of habitat.