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Endemic species |
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The Karst,
or Kras in Slovene, is a calcareous
plateau near the Gulf of Trieste, which gave the name to all karst phenomena
in the world. It was deforested in early history by people who raised sheep
and goats and was long known as a windy, stony desert. Nowadays, the land is
largely left unmanaged, so that the region is in the natural process of
reforestation. The exposed ridges of the highest peaks in the Karst and
Istria, however, show much slower forest growth, if any. They reach something
over 1000 m above sea level, not enough to be over the forest limit. But a
strong, cold bora wind blows here, especially in winter, causing many tree
and bush seedlings to dry up because they cannot get moisture from the frozen
ground. Summer droughts add their role to the effect. Endemic grassland
fauna, which is found here, is a proof of the permanent existence of
grassland refuges on Karst peaks, where some steppe species survived and
evolved into distinct species or subspecies. |
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The meadows on Mt.
Vremčica (1027 m) are home to the endemic heteropteran bug Dimorphocoris saulii Wagner,
1965, which is wingless and thus cannot fly. Its foodplants are
grasses of the genus Bromus. The
nearest location where a relative species, D. servadeii, was discovered, is Monte Catria in the Italian
Apennines, on the other side of the Adriatic sea. The common ancestor of both
species probably also lived in the dry northern Adriatic sea bed during the
glaciation periods of the Pleistocene, when the steppes were much more widely
distributed.
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The shallow northern part of the Adriatic (in
lighter color) was dry during the glaciations. |
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The other endemic
heteropteran species is Halticus
henschii Reuter, 1888, which has a wider living area. It was
described from Gorica and lives on Mts. Nanos, Čaven and on the Karst
plateau. Its foodplant is Genista
sericea. Its closest relative, H.
puncticollis, is distributed from Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina
to the east. The records of this species from Italy and Slovenia refer to H. henschii.
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In addition to these
species we discovered Platycranus boreae Gogala, 2002, at the top of Mt. Lipnik in Čičarija, northern
Istria, Slovenia, about 800 m above sea level. Its foodplant is Genista sericea, which is endemic to
the western part of the Balkans. However, Knyshov & Konstantinov (2013)
synonymized P. boreae with Platycranus remanei Wagner, 1955.
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The habitats of endemic
species are all threatened because wind turbines are planned to be build atop
karstic ridges! |
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Lipnik Genista
sericea Vremčica |
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