Collections

"Biodiversity Management and Conservation" is the name of the International Seminar which is organized in some European countries since 2007 with the aim of creating relationships and discussions between junior and senior researchers on these increasingly pressing issues. In the year 2022, the XIV edition of the Seminar was held in Serra San Bruno (Vibo Valentia, Italy) and had, as a specific theme, "Biodiversity and Sustainability: two important keywords for the future".

In order to better understand the phenomena concerning conservation and plant biodiversity, numerous communications were presented by researchers from four European countries and ranging from "Vegetation study for biodiversity conservation" to "Protected areas for the future of the Biodiversity Management and Conservation", from "Tools for Biodiversity management" to "Ecosystem services for biodiversity management". There were also several communications dealing with plant ecophysiology, environmental education, and new perspectives on wild plants for medicinal and food purposes: all related to the specific issue selected for the current edition of the International Seminar.

This collection of articles represents a part of the communications presented during the International Seminar, selected by a special commission that assessed them as suitable and deserving of publication as extended articles in Plant Sociology, a scientific journal that has always published articles on vegetation, habitat, and plant biodiversity management and conservation.

Manuscripts dealing with the same themes are also expected by authors who have not participated in the latest edition of the International Seminar, in order to enrich the discussion on these topics as much as possible.

"Biodiversity Management and Conservation" is the name of the International Seminar which is organized in some European countries since 2007 with the aim of creating relationships and discussions between junior and senior researchers on these increasingly pressing issues. In the year 2022, the XIV e ...

Bryophytes are a group of land plants of small size but with a large ecological impact. Although the bryophytes display high species diversity, a major limitation in their use as study organisms has been the lack of basic floristic, ecological, and alpha-taxonomic knowledge in many regions. The distribution of these plants depends on the general climatic and ecological factors, and interaction with other living beings. These factors interact with each other in many ways. Humidity is one of the main drivers influencing their survival, although most of them can stand prolonged periods of drought. In fact, during periods of dryness, mosses, despite being dehydrated, maintain their vitality. The Bryophyte life cycle is slow and can last for several months and sometimes, for some species, even years. The return of water restores the normal rhythm of the plant’s life. Bryophytic vegetation is also determined by the physical and chemical characteristics of the substrate on which it lives. The physical structure of the substrate allows air circulation and water retention, which depends on its chemical nature. For all these characteristics that differentiate Bryophytes from vascular plants, they deserve in-depth dedicated studies. Precisely with this Topical collection, we aim to collect contributions that deal with these types of vegetation and their peculiar species composition and to analyze how bryophytes are affected by climate change with different responses in distribution ecology and reproductive biology. Overall we intend to increase the level of bryophytic knowledge, deepening all those aspects of bryophyte communities often neglected.

Bryophytes are a group of land plants of small size but with a large ecological impact. Although the bryophytes display high species diversity, a major limitation in their use as study organisms has been the lack of basic floristic, ecological, and alpha-taxonomic knowledge in many regions. The dist ...