The research team turned to MaxEnt, short for maximum entropy modelling, one of the most widely used tools in modern biogeography. The technique works by comparing the environmental conditions at locations where a species has been recorded with the conditions available across the whole study area, then estimating the probability of occurrence at every grid cell. Rather than requiring absence data, which is notoriously unreliable, MaxEnt builds a picture of a species’ ecological niche from presence records alone. For a country as topographically and climatically varied as Algeria, which spans Mediterranean coastline, high plateaus and the northern fringe of the Sahara, this approach is particularly powerful because it can capture the full breadth of conditions a species tolerates.

To drive the models, the researchers assembled occurrence records for both oak species, drawing on field knowledge and global biodiversity databases, and combined them with a suite of environmental predictor variables covering temperature, precipitation and terrain. Crucially, they projected the models forward using future climate scenarios for three time horizons, allowing them to track not just whether habitat will be lost or gained, but where the geography of suitability will shift. The performance of the models was assessed using the Area Under the Curve, or AUC, a standard statistical measure of discrimination. Values above roughly 0.8 are generally considered good, and above 0.9 excellent. Both oak models exceeded 0.96, a strikingly high score that indicates the models separated suitable from unsuitable terrain with near-perfect reliability.

The single most influential variable shaping the distribution of both species was the Martonne aridity index, a classic climatic measure that combines annual precipitation with mean temperature to express the degree of water availability across a landscape. Its dominance in the models makes ecological sense. Mediterranean oaks live at the dry edge of what trees can tolerate, and their growth, survival and regeneration are tightly governed by the balance between water arriving as rain and water lost to the atmosphere. In Algeria, where warming is outpacing the global average and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, this finding underscores that aridity, not temperature alone, is the master variable controlling the fate of these forests.

When the researchers projected the models into the future, the two species told different stories. For cork oak, the annual rate of highly suitable habitat is expected to decline under every future scenario, with projected losses ranging from 0.040 percent to 0.191 percent per year. The numbers may look small, but compounded over decades they translate into a meaningful contraction of the species’ core range in Algeria. Cork oak is already under pressure across the western Mediterranean from land abandonment, overgrazing, fire and unexplained decline phenomena, so any additional climatic squeeze on its best habitat is cause for concern for foresters and conservationists alike.

Holm oak, by contrast, showed far greater stability. Its highly suitable habitat is projected to change only slightly, with shifts ranging from a loss of 0.021 percent to a gain of 0.164 percent per year depending on the scenario. This hardy evergreen is famously drought-tolerant, capable of surviving on thin soils and withstanding long summer dry seasons, and the model results reflect that toughness. In practical terms, the study suggests that holm oak could even hold its ground or modestly expand in some parts of Algeria as conditions change, making it a candidate species for stabilising forests in an increasingly arid landscape.

Perhaps the most vivid finding concerns elevation. The average elevation of suitable habitat is projected to shift under each climate scenario, ranging from 866 to 1,025 metres for cork oak and from 978 to 1,172.5 metres for holm oak. In other words, as the lowlands warm and dry, the climatic comfort zone for both species climbs the mountainsides, and holm oak consistently occupies higher ground than cork oak. This pattern echoes a well-documented global phenomenon in which mountain plant communities shift upslope in response to warming. The catch, as ecologists have repeatedly warned, is that mountains are cones: the higher a species climbs, the less land remains available, and slow-moving trees may lag far behind the pace of climate change.

The models also revealed a striking directional signature. Under most future scenarios, the highly suitable habitat for cork oak shifts towards the northeast of the country, while for holm oak it shifts towards the northwest. These compass bearings matter enormously for conservation planning. Northeastern Algeria, with the humid coastal ranges of Kabylia and El Kala, retains some of the wettest conditions in the country, and the projected northeastward drift of cork oak suitability suggests these areas will become increasingly critical refuges. The northwestward shift for holm oak points to a different set of priority landscapes, and the divergence between the two species means that a single, one-size-fits-all protected area network will not serve both trees equally well.

The practical value of this work lies in its maps. By identifying where habitat is highly suitable now and where it is likely to remain suitable through the end of the century, the study gives Algerian foresters a decision-support tool of real consequence. Rather than reacting to forest decline after it happens, managers can use these projections to prioritise which forest stands to protect, where to focus regeneration efforts, and which zones should be preserved as climate refugia. The authors emphasise that the maps are intended precisely for this purpose: helping foresters select the best conservation strategy for cork oak and holm oak and choose appropriate forest zones to be preserved before the climate window closes.

The study also sits within a growing body of Algerian research on climate-driven range shifts, including recent work on Atlas cedar, Aleppo pine, Phoenician juniper and the endemic oak Quercus afares, all pointing in a consistent direction: the country’s forest flora is being reshuffled by warming and drying. What makes the new findings compelling is the contrast between two closely related, sympatric oaks responding so differently to the same climatic pressures. As the Mediterranean basin warms faster than the global average, the fate of these forests will depend on whether conservation planning can anticipate the movement that the models now make visible. For Algeria’s cork and holm oaks, the future is not yet written, but the map of where it will unfold has finally been drawn.

Subject of Research: Species distribution modelling of cork oak and holm oak habitats in Algeria under climate change

Article Title: Modelling the current and future potential distributions of Quercus suber and Q. ilex (Fagaceae) in Algeria

Article References: Rais, H., Laala, A., Meghzili, I., Mennour, H., & Boucenna, H. (2026). Modelling the current and future potential distributions of Quercus suber and Q. ilex (Fagaceae) in Algeria. Plant Biosystems, 160(5), Article 239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44473-026-00241-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44473-026-00241-2

Keywords: Quercus suber, Quercus ilex, Algeria, MaxEnt, species distribution modelling, climate change, aridity index, habitat suitability, Mediterranean forests, cork oak, holm oak, forest conservation

The team focused on three oak species that dominate the climax forests of acidic substrates across the peninsula: cork oak (Quercus suber), Pyrenean oak (Quercus pyrenaica) and pedunculate oak (Quercus robur). These species sit at different points along a moisture gradient. Pedunculate oak, a temperate and humidity-loving species, thrives in the cool Atlantic north. Pyrenean oak, a marcescent species that holds its withered leaves through winter, occupies a transitional submediterranean zone. Cork oak, the iconic evergreen of Mediterranean silviculture, tolerates pronounced summer drought. Because the three species often coexist in the same landscapes, distributed along gradients from rocky ridge tops to moist valley bottoms, the researchers reasoned that climate change could trigger a domino effect: as each species retreats from its drier margins, a more drought-adapted congener may move in to take its place.

To test this idea, the researchers built high-resolution species distribution models at a one-square-kilometre resolution, integrating nearly a quarter of a million cleaned occurrence records from GBIF, national biodiversity databases and expert-curated sources. For pedunculate oak, the team applied a spatial thinning procedure that reduced more than 205,000 records to about 27,000, mitigating oversampling while preserving the species’ environmental coverage. The models combined nineteen bioclimatic indices from the CHELSA dataset with soil pH, soil texture, a Topographic Ruggedness Index and a Topographic Wetness Index, all chosen through hypothesis-driven screening that excluded collinear predictors.

The modelling framework was an ensemble approach implemented in the biomod2 package in R, combining eight techniques ranging from generalized linear models and generalized additive models to random forests, artificial neural networks and maximum entropy. Each model was validated over ten rounds of cross-validation, and only algorithms exceeding a True Skill Statistic threshold of 0.7 were averaged into the final ensembles. Performance was strong across the board: TSS values exceeded 0.83 and AUC scores surpassed 0.97 for all three species, with cork oak models performing best. Future projections drew on five general circulation models selected for their strong performance over Europe, run under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: an intermediate SSP3-7.0 scenario and a pessimistic SSP5-8.5 scenario, for the mid-century period 2041 to 2070 and the late-century period 2071 to 2100.

The environmental variables that best explained each species’ current distribution revealed their distinct ecological thresholds. For pedunculate oak, the minimum temperature of the coldest month was the dominant predictor, reflecting its tolerance of subzero winters, followed by topographic ruggedness and precipitation of the warmest quarter. Pyrenean oak’s distribution hinged on annual precipitation and warm-season rainfall together with soil pH, underscoring its dependence on water availability during the hot, dry summer. Cork oak, by contrast, was governed primarily by soil pH and mean annual temperature, favouring sites where winter minima stay above freezing. All three species are strictly silicicole, confined to acidic substrates, which means that climatically suitable areas on limestone soils will remain off-limits no matter how the climate shifts.

The projected trajectories diverge sharply. Pedunculate oak’s current range is expected to remain largely stable, with between 73 and 84 percent of its present suitable area persisting across scenarios, though its total suitable area declines slightly as losses outweigh gains. Cork oak emerges as the clear winner: its suitable range expands in every scenario and time frame, gaining between 32 and 44 percent of new territory, pushing northward and inland, with potential altitudinal advances reaching as far as the Pyrenees, while losing almost nothing at its southern edge. Pyrenean oak fares worst. Its total suitable area shrinks in all scenarios, with losses of up to nearly 60 percent of its current range concentrated in the southern and inland parts of the peninsula, and only limited compensatory gains at higher elevations.

When the researchers overlaid the range dynamics of different species, the turnover patterns became strikingly clear. Wherever one species loses suitability while another gains or holds steady in the same grid cells, a potential replacement is flagged. The dominant signal is a turnover from Pyrenean oak to cork oak, projected across roughly 20 to 47 percent of Pyrenean oak’s currently suitable range depending on the scenario, intensifying toward the end of the century and under harsher emissions. This replacement is expected to begin at the species’ southern fringes and spread into the interior. A smaller turnover, from pedunculate oak to Pyrenean oak, is projected across about 5 to 8 percent of the former’s range, mostly in low-altitude inland areas at the southern edge of its distribution. In some coastal zones of western and northeastern Iberia, cork oak may ultimately replace both of the other species where they both become unsuitable.

A crucial dimension of the study is its analysis of protected areas. Between a quarter and nearly half of the projected turnover zones fall inside classified conservation sites, including Natura 2000 areas designated under the European Union’s Habitats Directive, national parks and nature reserves. The turnover from Pyrenean oak to cork oak carries a direct policy consequence: it implies a shift from habitat 9230, the Galicio-Portuguese oak woods, to habitat 9330, cork oak forests, within sites whose management plans were written for the habitats of the past. The researchers argue that conservation targets in these sites will need periodic revision to maintain habitat continuity under changing climates, and that protected areas can serve as demonstration cases for adaptive management on the privately owned lands that dominate the Portuguese landscape.

The authors are careful to frame these projections as shifts in potential climatic and edaphic suitability rather than deterministic predictions of stand-level replacement. The models do not explicitly simulate dispersal, disturbance regimes or biotic interactions, and oak species are notoriously slow to migrate relative to the pace of climate change. Yet the convergent trends across multiple climate models and scenarios lend weight to the central inference: that a gradual Mediterraneanization of the Iberian landscape is underway, marked by longer summer dry periods and reduced annual precipitation, in which drought-adapted oaks progressively occupy the space vacated by their moisture-dependent relatives.

The practical implications reach deep into forestry. The researchers recommend protecting natural regeneration of the species likely to dominate in the future, since cork oak individuals already occur near Pyrenean oak stands on rocky outcrops and within forests. Where natural regeneration is insufficient, they point to seed sowing and planting techniques, including autumn sowing to maximize root development before summer drought, selection of larger acorns, protection from seed predators such as wild boar, and the use of large containers to avoid root deformation. They also advocate multi-provenance strategies that draw reproductive material from southern or low-altitude populations already adapted to drier conditions, combined with mixed-species stands to hedge risk. If guided by such adaptive management, the authors conclude, species turnover need not spell the loss of Iberian forests; it may instead be the mechanism by which they retain canopy cover, ecological function and resilience through a century of rapid environmental change.

Subject of Research: Projected climate-driven species turnover among Iberian oak forests

Article Title: Exploring turnover dynamics in Iberian Oak forests under climate change scenarios

Article References: Passos, I., Figueiredo, A., Gonçalves, J., Ribeiro, M. M., & Vila-Viçosa, C. (2026). Exploring turnover dynamics in Iberian Oak forests under climate change scenarios. Discover Conservation, 3(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44353-026-00084-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44353-026-00084-0

Keywords: climate change, oak forests, Quercus suber, Quercus pyrenaica, Quercus robur, species distribution models, species turnover, Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean forests, forest management, conservation, habitat suitability

The Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica, is an emblematic conifer endemic to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria, growing between roughly 1,300 and 2,200 meters on well-drained limestone and siliceous soils. It is a keystone species that regulates watershed soils and local climate, supports biodiversity, and carries deep cultural and economic value through its durable, aromatic timber. Yet the species has been in serious decline for decades. Dendroecological records across Morocco and Algeria show multi-decadal growth losses and rising drought sensitivity since the late twentieth century, driven by intensifying drought, heat stress, and warming-facilitated biotic attacks such as pine processionary moth outbreaks. The International Union for Conservation of Nature now classifies the species as endangered, and Algeria’s natural cedar forests have been reduced to small, fragmented relicts in the high mountains.

Chelia National Park, centered on Mount Chelia at 2,328 meters, contains one of the largest remaining cedar stands in the country, but even here recent surveys have documented drought-induced dieback alongside human pressures including overgrazing and illegal logging. While regional modeling studies have projected significant range contractions for Atlas cedar across North Africa, and Moroccan analyses have predicted habitat losses of 21 to 41 percent by 2070 depending on emissions, comparable local-scale analyses for Algeria have been lacking. Conservation planning in Chelia had not previously incorporated model-based climate projections, leaving managers without a quantitative picture of the park’s climatic future.

To fill that gap, the research team, led by Hichem Chenaker and Rami Khoucha of the Higher National School of Forests in Khenchela with colleagues from Iraq and Egypt, compiled 107 unique occurrence points from field GPS surveys conducted between 2022 and 2026 and from official park vegetation maps. To avoid pseudo-replication, the team assigned a single presence point to each mapped cedar stand rather than populating large polygons with many points, a design that also enforced natural spacing between records. The study area spans a Mediterranean montane climate in which most precipitation falls in winter, roughly 110 millimeters in January, while summers are extremely dry with only about 10 millimeters in July, and mean annual temperature falls from around 10 degrees Celsius at low elevations to near freezing at the highest peaks.

The researchers modeled habitat suitability with MaxEnt version 3.4.4, deliberately calibrating the model only within the park boundary to align its inference space with local management needs. Environmental predictors were assembled at one-kilometer resolution from WorldClim bioclimatic variables and NASADEM elevation data, then filtered for multicollinearity using a Pearson correlation threshold of 0.7 and a variance inflation factor cutoff of five. The final predictor set included mean diurnal range, isothermality, temperature seasonality, minimum temperature of the coldest month, temperatures of the wettest and driest quarters, precipitation of the driest month, precipitation seasonality, and elevation. Model performance was evaluated with ten-fold cross-validation, achieving an AUC of 0.83, a reasonable score given the restricted environmental gradients of the park, and transferability to future climates was checked with clamping and multivariate environmental similarity surface, or MESS, analyses.

Future projections drew on the WorldClim v2.1 CMIP6 multi-model ensemble, which averages bias-corrected outputs from eight major global climate models, under two emissions pathways: the intermediate SSP2-4.5 and the high-end SSP5-8.5, for the 2050 and 2070 time windows. The team applied a single 10th-percentile training presence threshold across all projections to keep the maps comparable, and classified the continuous suitability output into four classes. Under present-day conditions, only about 10.5 percent of the park’s 326 square kilometers, or 34.2 square kilometers, qualifies as highly suitable, nearly all of it in the high-elevation core southeast of the Chelia summit. Roughly 18 percent is moderately suitable, 7 percent weakly suitable, and the remaining 64 percent is already unsuitable, meaning the cedar is confined to narrow microclimates even today.

The future looks starker. Under the moderate SSP2-4.5 scenario, highly suitable habitat declines to about 8.9 percent of the park by 2050 and 7.9 percent by 2070, while unsuitable area expands to 66.3 percent, a net loss of nearly a quarter of the current prime habitat within half a century. Under the high-emission SSP5-8.5 pathway, losses arrive faster, with unsuitable conditions covering more than 67 percent of the park by 2070 and the remaining high-quality patches few, isolated, and concentrated in the east-central highlands near the highest peaks. MESS analysis showed that future climates in the high-elevation core remained within the range of the training data under all scenarios, while novel climates appeared only in low-elevation peripheries that are already unsuitable, lending confidence to the projections for the areas that matter most. Because the model was calibrated only within the park, the authors caution that these figures are conservative estimates of habitat loss.

One of the study’s most important contributions is its careful interpretation of why winter cold emerged as the dominant predictor. The minimum temperature of the coldest month, BIO6, accounted for more than 60 percent of the model’s explanatory power, followed by elevation at 17.8 percent and precipitation seasonality at 10.5 percent. Rather than reading this as a simple preference for cold, the authors interpret BIO6 as a proxy for elevation-linked humidity, snow persistence, and reduced summer water deficit. In Supramediterranean mountain systems, altitude and terrain features such as north-facing slopes and shaded ravines function as microrefugia by buffering heat load and vapor pressure deficit, so the coolest sites are frequently the moistest sites. Field observations support this: cedar stands cluster in cool, shaded topographic positions while lower slopes and ridgelines are largely cedar-free. As warming proceeds, the model suggests that precipitation seasonality and warm-season temperatures gain weight, pointing to intensifying summer drought as the central constraint on persistence. The authors also note that biological interactions, such as pest outbreaks, can act as ultimate drivers of local extinction in marginal cedar populations, guarding against an overly climate-deterministic reading.

The findings align with regional evidence from Morocco and Algeria, where modeling and tree-ring studies consistently show Atlas cedar tracking more humid conditions and suffering under warming and aridification, and with similar patterns in other Mediterranean montane conifers such as Spanish fir and European black pine. For Chelia, the authors propose an adaptive conservation strategy that goes beyond temperature-based upslope relocation: protecting high-elevation microrefugia, restoring habitat connectivity, assisted enrichment planting within refugial sites, seed banking and genetic conservation, and managing local stressors such as overgrazing, illegal logging, and fire. Critically, they argue that hydrological buffering deserves explicit attention, since riparian corridors, spring-fed slopes, and areas with shallow groundwater access act as natural drought refuges. The projected 25 percent contraction of highly suitable habitat by 2070, even under a low-emissions pathway, speaks directly to Sustainable Development Goal targets on climate action and life on land. The team acknowledges limitations, including niche truncation from local calibration, the absence of soil and disturbance data, and coarse climate inputs, and recommends future work with ensemble models, hierarchical regional-local approaches, finer downscaling, and quantitative fragmentation metrics to refine the outlook for Algeria’s vanishing cedars.

Subject of Research: Modeling current and future climate-driven habitat suitability of the endangered Atlas cedar in Chelia National Park, Algeria

Article Title: Climate resilience of Atlas cedar: habitat suitability modeling for climate action and life on land

Article References: Chenaker, H., Khoucha, R., Al-Quraishi, A. M. F., Atalla, M. A., & Bedair, H. (2026). Climate resilience of Atlas cedar: habitat suitability modeling for climate action and life on land. Discover Ecology, 2(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44396-026-00032-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44396-026-00032-1

Keywords: Atlas cedar, Cedrus atlantica, species distribution modeling, MaxEnt, climate change, Chelia National Park, habitat fragmentation, microrefugia, CMIP6, conservation planning, Mediterranean forests, Algeria

The research, published in Plant Biosystems by a team led by Andrea Coppi and Federico Selvi of the University of Florence together with colleagues from Camerino, Sassari, Basilicata and Palermo, tackled a long-standing question in plant biogeography and evolutionary ecology: do endemic species differ from widespread congeners in the range and patterns of their functional trait variation and genetic structure? While many studies have examined the genetics of rare plants, little is known about how intraspecific variation in functional traits relates to genetic variation in narrow Mediterranean forest endemics, particularly when compared against close relatives occupying similar habitats.

The two species form an ideal natural experiment. Aegonychon calabrum is confined to a few mountain localities in Calabria and one outlier population in Campania, growing in mixed holm oak-broadleaf or Calabrian pine forests up to 1400 meters above sea level. Aegonychon purpurocaeruleum, by contrast, ranges across most of southern Europe eastwards to Iran and is found throughout most of Italy. Both are perennial hemicryptophytic herbs of the forest understory with similar growth habits, showy blue or purple flowers pollinated by long-tongued insects, and the ability to spread vegetatively through creeping sterile stems. Both are diploid, though with different chromosome numbers, and no hybrids are known between them, indicating effective reproductive barriers.

The researchers sampled three populations of the endemic and seven populations of the widespread species, the latter spanning the entire latitudinal gradient of Italy from Lake Garda in the north to Sicily in the south. At each site, leaves were collected from ten fully developed individuals spaced at least ten meters apart to avoid sampling clones of the same plant. Two leaves per individual were used for trait measurements and a third was dried in silica gel for genetic analysis. The team measured three core leaf traits: leaf area, specific leaf area, and leaf dry matter content, which together convey key information about how plants acquire and conserve resources.

The trait results told a nuanced story. Leaf area was significantly lower in the endemic species, supporting the idea that A. calabrum has a more resource-conservative strategy than its widespread relative, consistent with a recent broader study of Mediterranean forest endemics. However, and unexpectedly, the overall amount of intraspecific variation in the three traits was comparable between the species, and in some cases even slightly wider in the endemic, despite the fact that the widespread species was sampled across a far broader range of climatic conditions. Within the endemic, the southern high-elevation population on siliceous substrate showed more resource-acquisitive traits, while the two northern populations on warm calcareous sites exhibited smaller leaves and lower specific leaf area, traits associated with tolerance of drought and nutrient limitation.

When the researchers translated the leaf measurements into Grime’s CSR ecological strategies, which describe trade-offs between competitive ability, stress tolerance and ruderality, they found that species identity explained almost none of the variation. Instead, population effects accounted for between 52 and 81 percent of the variation in the three strategy scores. The endemic’s populations ranged from predominantly stress-tolerant to ruderal, mirroring the spread seen in the widespread species. This lack of clear divergence in ecological strategies suggests that A. calabrum fits the so-called refuge model of endemism, in which narrow distribution reflects stress tolerance and low competitive ability in marginal habitats, rather than the specialist model, in which rarity stems from tight adaptation to a narrowly defined environment.

The genetic analysis, based on AFLP fingerprinting of 94 individuals producing 181 loci, delivered perhaps the most surprising findings. Analysis of molecular variance showed that the vast majority of genetic variation occurs within populations in both species, and mean expected heterozygosity was only slightly lower in the endemic (0.295 versus 0.311). This runs counter to the common expectation that rare, fragmented species suffer genetic erosion. Differentiation among populations was actually lower in the endemic than in the widespread species, and a discriminant analysis of principal components confirmed a clear genetic separation between the two species, with the endemic defined almost exclusively by two unique genetic clusters. Only about five percent of loci were flagged as candidates under selection, pointing to a similarly low impact of adaptive divergence at the genome level in both species.

The pivotal insight came from comparing phenotypic differentiation among populations with neutral genetic differentiation. In both species, phenotypic differentiation in leaf traits substantially exceeded genetic differentiation, a pattern indicating that directional or divergent selection, rather than random genetic drift, is shaping population differences in leaf form and function. The magnitude of the gap between the two measures was far greater than averages reported in meta-analyses of plant populations, reinforcing the conclusion that selection is a powerful force in both the rare and the common species. The authors note that this result held even under conservative assumptions about the additive genetic basis of the traits, making the signature of selection difficult to dismiss as a methodological artifact.

The study also probed whether genetically similar populations share similar trait values, a population-level version of niche conservatism. A significant positive correlation between trait similarity and genetic proximity emerged only for leaf area, and a local autocorrelation analysis revealed that the two northern populations of the endemic, which occupy similar habitats, form a clade with significantly similar trait values. This pattern suggests that shared ancestry and limited environmental divergence, rather than random processes alone, help maintain trait similarity among genetically close populations, even as other forces push populations apart phenotypically.

Taken together, the findings paint the rare Aegonychon calabrum as anything but an evolutionary dead end. Its populations combine substantial genetic diversity, considerable phenotypic plasticity and evidence of ongoing selection, suggesting a real capacity to adapt to changing habitat conditions. For conservation biologists, the message is that narrow range does not necessarily mean genetic fragility, and that Mediterranean forest endemics may harbor hidden adaptive potential. The authors call for future work using genome-wide sequencing approaches such as ddRADseq and genome-wide association studies to characterize genomic variation in endemic and widespread species pairs more comprehensively, opening the way to a deeper understanding of how rarity and adaptability coexist in the plant world.

Subject of Research: Leaf trait variation, genetic structure and selection in a narrow Mediterranean forest endemic plant compared with its widespread congener

Article Title: Are leaf traits and genetic differentiation patterns divergent in endemic vs widespread congeneric plant species? Insights from the Mediterranean forest species pair Aegonychon calabrum-A. purpurocaeruleum (Boraginaceae)

Article References: Coppi, A., Santini, G., Canullo, R., Carrari, E., Chelli, S., Farris, E., Gasperini, C., Rosati, L., Santi, I., Bajona, E., Campetella, G., & Selvi, F. (2026). Are leaf traits and genetic differentiation patterns divergent in endemic vs widespread congeneric plant species? Insights from the Mediterranean forest species pair Aegonychon calabrum-A. purpurocaeruleum (Boraginaceae). Plant Biosystems, 160(5), Article 252. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44473-026-00254-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44473-026-00254-x

Keywords: Aegonychon calabrum, plant endemism, leaf traits, AFLP fingerprinting, genetic diversity, Mediterranean forests, niche conservatism, PST-FST comparison, CSR strategies, population genetics, directional selection, understory herbs