Scramoncin, L.; Gerdol, R.; Brancaleoni, L. How Effective Is Environmental Protection for Ensuring the Vitality of Wild Orchid Species? A Case Study of a Protected Area in Italy. Plants2024, 13, 610.
Scramoncin, L.; Gerdol, R.; Brancaleoni, L. How Effective Is Environmental Protection for Ensuring the Vitality of Wild Orchid Species? A Case Study of a Protected Area in Italy. Plants 2024, 13, 610.
Scramoncin, L.; Gerdol, R.; Brancaleoni, L. How Effective Is Environmental Protection for Ensuring the Vitality of Wild Orchid Species? A Case Study of a Protected Area in Italy. Plants2024, 13, 610.
Scramoncin, L.; Gerdol, R.; Brancaleoni, L. How Effective Is Environmental Protection for Ensuring the Vitality of Wild Orchid Species? A Case Study of a Protected Area in Italy. Plants 2024, 13, 610.
Abstract
Orchids are among the plants most threatened by anthropic impact and environmental changes. Therefore, all known orchid species are protected in several countries by regional, national and international legislation. Several studies cast doubts on the effectiveness of legislation to ensure protection of wild orchids. We assessed the vitality of four orchid populations in a coastal area in Northern Italy, by monitoring vegetative and reproductive traits of orchid populations growing both in protected sites comprised in the Natura 2000 network and in non-protected sites. We also monitored the level of environmental threat to orchid vitality. Early flowering deceptive species (Ophrys sphegodes and Anacamptis morio) exhibited high vegetative vitality and experienced similar levels of environmental threat in protected and non-protected areas. However, their reproductive success was strongly jeopardized probably by failed pollination that impeded fruit set. Late-flowering, partially or totally rewarding species (Anacamptis pyramidalis and Anacamptis coriophora) were more strongly impacted by spring mowing, ungulate herbivory and alien species. Only for A. coriophora were herbivory and alien species invasion lower at protected vs. non-protected sites which ensured higher population vitality at protected sites. We conclude that environmental protection is ineffective for preserving orchids without targeted actions against specific environmental threats.
Keywords
environmental threats; Natura 2000; population vitality; protected areas; reproductive traits; vegetative traits
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Plant Sciences
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
