Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae DOI: 10.5586/asbp.3603 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER Publication history Received: 2018-08-10 Accepted: 2018-11-26 A contribution to the knowledge of Published: 2018-12-31 bryophytes in polar areas subjected to Handling editor Michał Ronikier, W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish rapid deglaciation: a case study from Academy of Sciences, Poland southeastern Spitsbergen Authors’ contributions AS: designed and coordinated the study, determined the 1 2 3 moss specimens, wrote the Adam Stebel *, Ryszard Ochyra , Nadezhda A. Konstantinova , manuscript; RO: designed Wiesław Ziaja4, Krzysztof Ostafn4, Wojciech Maciejowski5 the study, determined the 1 Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy with Division of Laboratory moss specimens, wrote the Medicine, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, Ostrogórska 30, 41-200 Sosnowiec, Poland manuscript, contributed 2 Department of Bryology, W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences, Lubicz 46, the distribution maps; NAK: 31-512 Cracow, Poland determined the liverwort 3 Kola Science Center, Russian Academy of Sciences, 184256, Kirovsk, Murmansk District, Russia specimens, wrote the 4 Institute of Geography and Spatial Management, Jagiellonian University, Gronostajowa 7, manuscript; WZ: collected the 30-387 Cracow, Poland specimens, developed the 5 Institute of the Middle and Far East, Jagiellonian University, Gronostajowa 3, 30-387 Cracow, tables, wrote the manuscript; Poland KO: collected the specimens, developed the tables, * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] contributed the study area map; WM: conceived and coordinated the study, collected the specimens, developed the Abstract tables, wrote the manuscript, Te paper provides a list of 54 species of bryophytes (48 mosses and six liverworts) contributed the study area map collected from Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Arctic Svalbard archipelago Funding (Norwegian Arctic), in 2016. Tey were collected mainly from its southeastern The Jagiellonian University coast (Sørkapp Land and Torell Land), which has been rapidly abandoned by expedition in 2016 was the glaciers in the last few decades and is heavily under-investigated bryologically. main part of the project Te most interesting and phytogeographically important fndings are the mosses “Southeastern Spitsbergen landscape-seascape and Bryum salinum, Campylium longicuspis, Coscinodon cribrosus, Orthogrimmia ses- biodiversity dynamics under sitana, Pogonatum dentatum, Polytrichum juniperinum, Sanionia georgicouncinata, current climate warming”, Schistidium frigidum, and S. pulchrum, and the liverwort Cephalozia bicuspidata. which benefts from the For each species, a short taxonomic and phytogeographical comment is provided, support of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the distribution of 12 rare or otherwise phytogeographically interesting species (http://www.fpa2.com). The in Svalbard is shown on maps. work of RO has been fnancially supported through the Keywords statutory fund of the W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Arctic; distribution; liverworts; mosses; phytogeography; Svalbard Academy of Sciences. Competing interests No competing interests have been declared. The content of the present publications is the sole responsibility of Introduction the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and can under no While the areas of the western and northern parts of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the circumstances be regarded Arctic Svalbard archipelago (Norway), have been repeatedly used as a place of research as refecting the position of the Prince Albert II of Monaco on bryophytes, its southeastern coast is still very poorly studied bryologically. So far, no Foundation. bryological data are available from Torell Land, and the only contribution regarding the bryophyte fora of Sørkapp Land was published by Kuc [1]. Te study was based on a Copyright notice collection made by Professor K. Birkenmajer in 1962 during a geological survey of the © The Author(s) 2018. This is an Open Access article distributed northeastern part of the area. In total, fve species of liverwort and 26 species of moss under the terms of the have hitherto been recorded from northeastern Sørkapp Land. Te area covered by the Creative Commons Attribution present study has not been previously investigated botanically, apart from preliminary License, which permits observations made in 2005 [2]. Studies of Svalbard bryophytes have a long history, dating redistribution, commercial and noncommercial, provided that back to the end of the seventeenth century [3]. Te frst chronological compilation of the moss fora was presented by Kuc [4] who recognized 265 species of moss from this Published by Polish Botanical Society 1 of 26 Stebel et al. / Bryophytes of recently deglaciated areas in Spitsbergen archipelago. In the most recent survey of bryophytes of Svalbard, Frisvoll and Elvebakk the article is properly cited. [3] recorded 85 species of liverwort and 288 species of moss in this area. Over the Citation following 2 decades, studies on the bryofora continued [5–24], providing much new Stebel A, Ochyra R, distributional data for these plants in this Arctic archipelago. As the area of Svalbard Konstantinova NA, Ziaja W, is subjected to deglaciation in many places, new discoveries of species and changes in Ostafn K, Maciejowski W. A contribution to the knowledge the frequency of species that are already known to exist there are to be expected. of bryophytes in polar areas Te main objectives of the present study are: (i) complementing the knowledge subjected to rapid deglaciation: on the diversity of the bryophyte fora of Spitsbergen; (ii) providing information on a case study from southeastern bryophytes occurring in areas that, until recently, were covered with ice. Spitsbergen. Acta Soc Bot Pol. 2018;87(4):3603. https://doi. org/10.5586/asbp.3603 Digital signature Material and methods This PDF has been certifed using digital signature with a trusted timestamp to assure its origin and integrity. A verifcation Study area trust dialog appears on the PDF document when it is opened in a compatible PDF reader. Certifcate properties provide Plant material was collected from research sites located in three separate areas in further details such as certifcation time and a signing reason in case any alterations Spitsbergen. Most collections were made in Sørkapp Land and Torell Land on the made to the fnal content. If the certifcate is missing or invalid it is recommended to southeastern coast of the island, which has undergone intensive deglaciation during verify the article on the journal website. the past century. Te area of our exploration covers 156 km2 and samples of bryophytes were taken from 24 sites located mainly near the coastline. Te remaining four sites are located in the Endalen and Bjørndalen valleys, near Longyearbyen in Nordenskiöld Land in central-western Spitsbergen, an area that was only slightly glaciated during the Holocene (Fig. 1, Fig. 2, Tab. 1). All collecting sites in the main three regions (Sørkapp Land, Torell Land, and Nordenskiöld Land) have the same tectonics and lithostratigraphy corresponding to the pre-Quaternary bedrock as well as consequential similar terrain relief of table mountains with extensive surface peneplanation. It is signifcant for plant development that soils in the majority of the investigated sites are derived from outcrops of the same pre-Quaternary sediments. Te bedrock consists of overlapping layers of sandstones, mudstones, and siltstones which belong to the following four geological formations: the Upper-Cretaceous Carolinefellet formation, which constitutes the foot and lower parts of mountain slopes, and three Tertiary formations, namely the Firkanten, Basilica, and Sarkofagen formations. Teir chemical composition determines the occurrence of mainly acidic siliceous bedrocks with minor occurrence of carbonate rocks [25–30]. Te rocks of these formations are not resistant, weathering easily into material with a full grain-size diferentiation, ranging from clay to block fractions. However, the study areas difer signifcantly in their climate features. Te vicinity of Longyearbyen is one of the warmest areas on Spitsbergen due to its location on the inner part of Isforden, warmed by the West Spitsbergen Current, a warm and salty current that runs poleward just west of Spitsbergen [31]. Near sea level in Longyear- byen, during the period 1981–2010, the mean annual temperature was −5.2°C and the mean total annual precipitation was 191 mm [32], conditions which persist to the present. Te southeastern Spitsbergen coast is much cooler under the infuence of the cold East Spitsbergen Current fowing from the north [30]. Environmental features and rare seasonal meteorological observations provide evidence of this [33–35]. Tis climate diferentiation occurred in Spitsbergen during all of the Holocene [32]. Te warmer climate resulted in relatively little glaciation and abundant Arctic tundra in the Longyearbyen vicinity. Even in the Little Ice Age, i.e., until the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of the area was free of glacial ice. Nowadays, the glaciers occupy no more than 18% of the area [36,37]. On the eastern side, a much cooler climate has resulted in glaciation and very scant vegetation on the southeastern Spitsbergen coast. Tis area was mostly covered by glaciers in 1900, as shown on the map by Wassiliew [38]. Plants grew only in small oases there [39]. Te transformation of the