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IUCN criteria (IUCN, 2001). The low presence of
lichens in national, European and global Red Lists
confirms this situation. Due to their low detectability
and to the poor knowledge of individual species, the
habitat-based approach is so far considered the most
effective conservation practice for lichens (Scott et al.,
1997; Hallingbäck, 2007).
On this basis only a few countries - Spain (Atienza et
al., 2004), Belarus (Maslovsky, 2005), Czech Republic
(Podhajská & Turoňova, 2005), Estonia (Kulvik et al.,
2005), Romania (Sârbu, 2005), Slovakia (Galvánek,
2005), United Kingdom (Duckworth, 2006), Bulgaria
(Peev et al., 2009) - have managed to use also lichens
in the application of the IPAs selection criteria.
In Italy, the interest on species inventories and
biodiversity monitoring programs is increasing but
several groups of organisms are still neglected, and
lichens are rarely included in these inventories (Motta,
2002; Chiarucci & Bonini, 2005; Giordani, et al. 2006,
Bacaro et al., 2008; Brunialti et al., 2010; Ravera
et al., 2010 in press). However, the long tradition
of lichenological studies (Nimis, 1993) and the
availability of a detailed database (Nimis & Martellos,
2008) allows Italy to consistently include also lichens
in the IPAs project.
In this work, the IPA concept has been applied in
order to select sites worthy of conservation for lichens.
Materials and methods
Source of the data
Italy is among the lichenologically best known
countries of the Mediterranean area and Europe.
A great amount of information is included in the
Herbarium of the University of Trieste (TSB) which
hosts c. 40.000 specimens, mainly from Italy. On
these basis Nimis (1993) provided his fundamental
contribution to the knowledge of the Italian lichens
in which 2145 infrageneric taxa were reported. This
database was continuously updated and since 1999 it
is available on-line (Nimis, 1999). The most updated
version (Nimis & Martellos, 2008), which includes
2345 infrageneric taxa, is the main source of data used
for the IPAs project.
Criteria for IPA selection
To be qualified as an Important Plant Area, a
site needs to satisfy the criteria A or B or C or any
combination of these criteria. According to Anderson
(2002):
- Criterion A is based on threatened species. A site
should be considered nationally important for plant
conservation if it supports globally (i) end/or European
(ii) end/or national endemic (iii) and/or near endemic/
limited range (iv) threatened species. Thresholds for
this criterion can be applied by selecting: all sites
containing 5% or more of the national population or
the five (-ten) ‘best’ sites.
- Criterion B is based on species richness. A site
should be considered nationally important for plant
conservation if it contains high number of species
within a range of defined habitats taken as level 2 habitat
types using the EUNIS classification. Thresholds for
this criterion can be applied by selecting: the five (-ten)
‘best’ sites for each habitat or up to 10% of the national
resource (area) of each habitat.
- Criterion C is based on vegetation of high botanical
value. A site should be considered nationally important
for plant conservation if it supports any official
(according to Habitat Directive) threatened habitat.
Criteria A and B were reviewed to be consistent with
the data available for Italian lichens at 2008 (Nimis &
Martellos, 2008).
Sites were selected using the ‘best sites’ approach,
encompassing the biogeographical variation of Italy.
An additional parameter (Criterion D) has been added,
as follows (Tab. 1).
Criterion A
Only two lichens are globally red listed (IUCN,
2009) and do not occur in Italy and no lichens are
listed in the annexes of Habitats Directive and Bern
Convention admitted for selection (Anderson, 2002).
For these reasons lichens can be qualified under
subcriterion Aii only through the European Red List of
macrolichens (Sérusiaux, 1989).
Subcriterion Aiii, that includes national endemic
species with their population range entirely within
the country, and subcriterion Aiv, that includes
near endemic species which range its limited to
2-3 countries (Anderson et al., 2005), were also
considered. The “Material for Red Lists” provided by
Nimis & Martellos (2008), including the extremely
rare species of the Italian lichen biota was used as
source for subcriteria Aiii and Aiv.
Criterion B
The reference habitat of each species was attributed
ex-novo using the EUNIS level II classification,
on the base of literature data and samples stored in
Italian herbaria. For the purposes of the program,
archaeological sites are considered to be an environment
of particular interest, increasing the biodiversity of a