Learning from the past to forecast the future: a case study on Berardia subacaulis, a paleo-endemic species of the SW Alps

Future climate change may lead to a substantial loss of biodiversity. Endemic plants are exposed at an increased extinction risk because they are likely more dispersal-limited, less genetically variable, thus less able to rapidly adapt to climate change than species with broader distribution. In plants, global warming can lead to changes in distributional range, reproductive biology and plant-insect interactions. To produce reliable estimates of the risk, it is fundamental to investigate several aspects of the species under consideration. The present study is aimed at using Berardia subacaulis as a model to investigate possible effects of global warming on the survival of a paleo-endemic species restricted to the south-west Alps.