Documented extinction of Lophozia ascendens (Marchantiophyta, Lophoziace) from the area of the Beskid Wyspowy Range (Polish Western Carpathians)

Abstract

During the last 60 years environmental changes in the Polish part of the Carpathians have induced the disappearance of some rare or interesting components of the liverwort flora such as Frullania tamarisci, F. fragilifolia or Metzgeria violacea. The extinction process of vulnerable species can be clearly noticed, but long term, unfavorable environmental changes may conduce to the retreating or extinction more resistant species. Among them we can place Lophozia ascendens.
This lignicolous plant is listed in the ‘Red Data Book of European Bryophytes’ in R category. In the Polish Carpathians it has a relatively wide, some dissected range and is relatively frequent, but in a local scale only. The species is spread in the Western part, ranging from the Beskid Ślaski to the Beskid Sądecki and extending eastwards to the Bieszczady Zachodnie in the Eastern Polish Carpathians.
From the territory of Poland, Lophozia ascendens was reported for the first time in 1956, from the Mt Ostra above Łętowe village in the Beskid Wyspowy. Up to now the species has been reported from 30 localities in the Polish part of the Carpathians.
On the site mentioned above the species occurs abundantly on rotten stumps in young spruce forest, between 750 and 780 m a.s.l. During the hepaticological investigations (2001-2004, 2007) conducted in the Beskid Wyspowy, the author tried to rediscover this species repeatedly, but its presence on this site has not been confirmed despite intensive special searching.
Disappearance of L. ascendens on this locality is strongly linked with human activity. Forestry management and felling caused forest fragmentation, reduction of habitat humidity and, in consequence, destruction of population of the species. This is the first report about the extension of L. ascendens from the Polish part of the Carpathians and a next signal of vanishing tendency of rare epixlic species of mountain forests.