Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae DOI: 10.5586/asbp.3608 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Publication history Received: 2018-08-09 Accepted: 2018-12-05 The frst attempt to list the archaeophytes Published: 2018-12-31 of Iceland Handling editor Michał Ronikier, W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland Paweł Wąsowicz* Icelandic Institue of Natural History, Akureyri Division, Borgir við Norðurslóð, Pósthólf 180, 602 Funding Akureyri, Iceland This research was funded by the Icelandic Institute of Natural * Email: [email protected] History. Competing interests No competing interests have Abstract been declared. Tis article presents for the frst time a list of the possible archaeophytes from Iceland. In the present study, all the fowering plant taxa that are considered native/long Copyright notice © The Author(s) 2018. This is an established in Iceland were assessed against criteria designed to recognize possible Open Access article distributed archaeophytes. Te assessment resulted in a list of 39 taxa meeting (or possibly under the terms of the meeting) at least one research criterion. Nineteen taxa were classifed as possible Creative Commons Attribution archaeophytes, 10 were classifed as non-natives of unknown age (due to the inability License, which permits redistribution, commercial and to classify them as neither archaeophytes nor neophytes using the available data), noncommercial, provided that while the remaining 10 species were classifed as uncertain (doubtfully native). Te the article is properly cited. limitations of the present study in terms of both the methodology and the uncertain- ties connected with the classifcation of individual taxa are discussed. Citation Wąsowicz P. The frst attempt to list the archaeophytes of Keywords Iceland. Acta Soc Bot Pol. Iceland; archaeophytes; neophytes; fora; Arctic, subarctic 2018;87(4):3608. https://doi. org/10.5586/asbp.3608 Digital signature This PDF has been certifed using digital signature with a trusted timestamp to assure its origin and integrity. A verifcation trust dialog appears on the PDF document Introduction when it is opened in a compatible PDF reader. Certifcate properties provide further details such as certifcation time and a signing reason in case any alterations Humans have always moved other species from one place to another. Plants are no made to the fnal content. If the certifcate exception, and there is evidence of the human-assisted transportation and introduc- is missing or invalid it is recommended to verify the article on the journal website. tion of plant species dating back to prehistoric times [1]. Initially, with the advent of gardening and agriculture, this movement of species involved a small number of taxa being slowly transported over relatively short distances. Tere is, however, no doubt that it resulted in changes to the distribution of many species and the enrichment of local foras. Tis process of the slow transportation of species of economic importance, alien weeds that followed the transportation of cattle, and seeds of crops started at the beginning of the Neolithic and contributed to the spread of many plant taxa [1]. “Old aliens”, which have become a part of local foras, that date from the prehistorical times to about 1500 are usually called archaeophytes [2,3]. Tis group is frequently contrasted with neophytes, whose immigration to a given area took place in “modern historical times” and is usually much better documented. Apart from their time of introduction, archaeophytes and neophytes difer in many other aspects including their ecological and biogeographical characteristics and infuence on local fora and ecosystems [4]. Tere is no doubt that foristic and phytogeographic studies rely on an accurate distinction between native and alien species [1]. In order to understand the processes that govern the distribution of species at local and global scales, these two groups should be clearly defned [1,3]. Also, in species conservation, the recognition of native and alien taxa is crucial. However, distinguishing between native and alien species can be challenging (e.g., [5]). Te task becomes even more difcult when a considerable amount of time has passed since the introduction of a species into the given region. In such cases, only indirect evidence (historical records from old foras and ecological data) is ofen available to researchers. Published by Polish Botanical Society 1 of 12 Wąsowicz / Archaeophytes in Iceland Te history of human settlement in Iceland is very short when compared with continental Europe. Norse settlers that were migrating across the North Atlantic ar- rived in Iceland in the ninth century. Terefore, human impact on the local fora began just a bit over 1,100 years ago. Even so, the task of distinguishing between native and alien species in Icelandic fora is very difcult, especially in the case of the “old aliens”, mainly because there are very limited historical data sources on Icelandic fora. In contrast to other European countries, studies on the non-native fora of Iceland have been almost abandoned since the work published by Davíðsson [6], which sum- marizes early data on the immigration and naturalization of fowering plants in Iceland. Only recently, a comprehensive and up-to-date list of non-native plant taxa has been published for Iceland [7]. Tis list, however, covers only species that arrived in Iceland afer 1840; thus, a study detailing Icelandic “old aliens” has not been published so far. Te current article approaches the question of “old aliens” (archaeophytes) in Iceland, and it presents a list of species that can be regarded as old anthropogenic additions to the local fora. However, it should be acknowledged that the present study is only a frst attempt to list the Icelandic archaeophytes based on objective criteria, and that addressing this problem requires a diferent scientifc approach from those commonly used in similar studies carried out in other parts of Europe that have land connec- tions with the earliest agricultural centers and a long history of human impact on the composition of local foras [1,8]. Material and methods Te species nomenclature used in this study follows Kristinsson’s (2008) checklist [9]. Two groups of taxa, native/long established [9] and neophytes [7], were identifed on the basis of the available literature. Subsequently, all native/long established taxa were assessed against the following criteria: ■ Ecological criterion: an archaeophyte should be confned to man-made habitats or, at least, be much more common in such habitats than in seminatural habitats (cf. [1]). It has been shown that native species can occur in a variety of habitats ranging from natural and seminatural to disturbed ecosystems ofen heavily transformed by humans. On the other hand, non-native species tend to frst occur in man-made habitats [10], and they ofen remain confned to such habitats. Richardson et al. [10] have demonstrated that only a small subset of non-native species is able to overcome strong ecological limitations and colonize seminatural and natural habitats. Such taxa are called invasive and usually recruit from neophytes [10]. Te studies carried out hitherto showed that archaeophytes are likely to be restricted to man-made habitats or are much more frequent in man-made than in seminatural habitats [1]. ■ Historical criterion: archaeophytes should have been recorded in the wild in Iceland before AD 1770 or, at least, their presence in Iceland before this date should be very likely based on the available evidence (cf. [1]). Te widely accepted defnition of an archaeophyte is a species that has been introduced to a given area before 1500 [1,8,11]. In practice, it is very difcult to make judgments on the exact timing of the arrival of a species based on historical evidence in almost every case due to the lack of botanical records dating back to 1500. Preston et al. [1] have set the upper limit of archaeophyte records at AD 1700; accepting this year as the upper limit for Iceland archaeophyte records seems to be reasonable and well founded (see discussion). ■ Subfossil evidence criterion: there should be no fossil/subfossil evidence of the presence of archaeophytes in the Holocene before the settlement of Iceland (cf. [1]). Te available data on Holocene subfossil remains from Iceland are relatively scarce when compared to other countries. However, when available, records of pollen (or other remains) in postglacial sediments were considered. Te criteria used in this study follow those proposed by Preston et al. [1] with neces- sary modifcations for their application to Iceland conditions. Taxa that meet (or possibly meet) at least one criterion were subsequently classifed into three diferent groups: (i) taxa meeting ecological and historical criteria with no available subfossil evidence were classifed as possible archaeophytes; (ii) taxa meeting © The Author(s) 2018 Published by Polish Botanical Society Acta Soc Bot Pol 87(4):3608 2 of 12 Wąsowicz / Archaeophytes in Iceland the ecological criterion but not meeting the historical criterion were classifed as non-natives of unknown age; and (iii) when there was doubt about whether the taxon meets the ecological criterion, it was classifed as doubtfully native. Te presence of the subfossil record and its infuence on the fnal classifcation was discussed separately for relevant taxa. Results Tere were 39 taxa, which were previously classifed as native, that met or possibly met at least one of the criteria set for archaeophytes (Tab. 1). Most of the taxa met the ecological criterion (31), while 25 met the historical criterion. Tere were doubts about whether eight taxa met the ecological criterion and signifcant doubts about whether 14 taxa met the historical criterion. Evidence from the subfossil record existed for only three taxa. Due to the difculties in species identifcation on the basis of pollen morphology in Poaceae, all taxa from this family were not assessed against the subfossil remains criterion. Te fnal classifcation indicated that 19 taxa were possible archaeophytes and the remaining taxa (20) were non-natives of unknown age (10 taxa) or doubtfully native (10 taxa).