Refugia lodowcowe w Europie: co wiemy o historii współczesnych gatunków roślin i zwierząt

Modern research methods provide many new possibilities to reconstruct the history of species and the colonization of land after its release from the Pleistocene ice sheet. New laboratory techniques and research trends form another, new and interdisciplinary approach to these issues. In this paper, we present the history of plant and animal species during the last glaciation (Vistulian, 115−11.7 ka BP) and after the melting of the ice sheets. We also summarize the evolution of theories and views on this subject. Initially, the role of glacial refugia that are the places of survival of the species and the source of expansion to the north of the continent after the release of Europe from the ice sheet, were attributed to the Iberian, Apennine and Balkan peninsulas. This was due to the fact that in Europe only in these regions favourable conditions for the survival of temperate species existed. However, numerous paleozoological, palaeobotanical and paleoclimatological fossil evidences from the Vistulian period, and extensive molecular research on contemporary populations of species inhabiting different areas of the continent show a completely different image of glacial refugia and another model of postglacial expansion. The paper describes documented significance of extensive refugia (macrorefugia) that existed in the Carpathians, the Crimea, the Ural, the Caucasus and the Russian Plain in postglacial colonization of Europe. It shows also importance of small northern refugia often found near the border of the ice−sheet in survival of boreal species. One of the nearest refugium in the vicinity of the border of the ice sheet in last glacial maximum period was the refugium located in the Kraków−Częstochowa Upland (S Poland) and in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (C Poland).