Mediterranean Biogeographic Region
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The Mediterranean Biogeographic Region is the
biogeographic Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through geological time. Organisms and biological communities often vary in a regular fashion along geographic gradients of latitude, elevation, ...
region around and including the
Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the ea ...
. The term is defined by the
European Environment Agency The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides independent information on the environment. Definition The European Environment Agency (EEA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) which provides i ...
as applying to the land areas of Europe that border on the Mediterranean Sea, and the corresponding territorial waters. The region is rich in biodiversity and has many endemic species. The term may also be used in the broader sense of all the lands of the
Mediterranean Basin In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin (; also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea) is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and w ...
, or in the narrow sense of just the Mediterranean Sea.


Extent

The European Commission defines the Mediterranean Biogeographic Region as consisting of the Mediterranean Sea, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, large parts of Portugal, Spain and Italy, and a smaller part of France. The region includes 20.6% of European Union territory.


Climate

The region has cool humid winters and hot dry summers.
Wladimir Köppen Wladimir Peter Köppen (; russian: Влади́мир Петро́вич Кёппен, translit=Vladimir Petrovich Kyoppen; 25 September 1846 – 22 June 1940) was a Russian-German geographer, meteorologist, climatologist and botanist. After stu ...
divided his "Cs" mediterranean
climate classification Climate classifications are systems that categorize the world's climates. A climate classification may correlate closely with a biome classification, as climate is a major influence on life in a region. One of the most used is the Köppen climate ...
into "Csa" with a highest mean monthly temperature over and "Csb" where the mean monthly temperature was always lower than . The region may also be subdivided into dry zones such as
Alicante Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in t ...
in Spain, and humid zones such as
Cinque Terre The Cinque Terre (; lij, Çinque Tære, meaning "Five Lands") is a coastal area within Liguria, in the northwest of Italy. It lies in the west of La Spezia Province, and comprises five villages: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, ...
in Italy.


Terrain

The region has generally hilly terrain and includes islands, high mountains, semi-arid steppes and thick
Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub is a biome defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. The biome is generally characterized by dry summers and rainy winters, although in some areas rainfall may be uniform. Summers are typically hot in ...
with many
aromatic plant An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile (easily evaporated at normal temperatures) chemical compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetheroleum, or simply as the o ...
s. There are rocky shorelines and sandy beaches. The region has been greatly affected by human activity such as livestock grazing, cultivation, forest clearance and forest fires. In recent years tourism has put greater pressure on the shoreline environment.


Biodiversity

The Mediterranean Biogeographic Region is rich in biodiversity and has many
endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...
species. The region has more plants species than all the other biogeographical regions of Europe combined. The wildlife and vegetation are adapted to the unpredictable weather, with sudden downpours or strong winds. Coastal
wetland A wetland is a distinct ecosystem that is flooded or saturated by water, either permanently (for years or decades) or seasonally (for weeks or months). Flooding results in oxygen-free (anoxic) processes prevailing, especially in the soils. The ...
s are home to endemic species of insects, amphibians and fish, which provide food for large flocks of
wader 245px, A flock of Dunlins and Red knots">Red_knot.html" ;"title="Dunlins and Red knot">Dunlins and Red knots Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wikt:wade#Etymology 1, wading along shorelines and mudflat ...
s and
dabbling duck The Anatinae are a subfamily of the family Anatidae ( swans, geese and ducks). Its surviving members are the dabbling ducks, which feed mainly at the surface rather than by diving. The other members of the Anatinae are the extinct moa-nalo, a yo ...
s. The sea is also rich in marine life, including many endemic species. The shallow coastal waters hold huge ''
Posidonia ''Posidonia'' is a genus of flowering plants. It contains nine species of marine plants ("seagrass"), found in the seas of the Mediterranean and around the south coast of Australia. The APG system (1998) and APG II system (2003) accept this gen ...
'' beds, underwater meadows that harbor rare
crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...
s,
sponge Sponges, the members of the phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), are a basal animal clade as a sister of the diploblasts. They are multicellular organisms that have bodies full of pores and channels allowing water to circulate through t ...
s and ''
Ascidiacea Ascidiacea, commonly known as the ascidians, tunicates (in part), and sea squirts (in part), is a polyphyletic class in the subphylum Tunicata of sac-like marine invertebrate filter feeders. Ascidians are characterized by a tough outer "tunic" ...
'' (sea squirts). As of 2009 the region was not sufficiently covered in the EuMon database. Recruiting volunteers to monitor species may help address the issue. The
Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...
is particularly rich in species, including rare and endemic species, due to its complex climate and terrain, and because it provided refugia during the glacial period of the
Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...
. A 2011 study of spiders in the coastal dunes of Portugal showed that the primary factor in beta diversity was a broad-scale gradient of mediterraneity. Diversity was lower in the northern dunes, which are in the Eurosiberian biogeographic region, and higher in the center and south in the Mediterranean biogeographic region


Related concepts


Mediterranean Basin

Arco Aguilar and Rodríguez Delgado state that three large floristic regions originated in the Mesogean region after the Pleistocene glaciation, the Mediterranean, Saharo-North-Arabian and Iranian-Turanian. Academics such as Ana Isabel Queiroz and Simon Pooley consider that the Mediterranean biogeographic region includes all of the Mediterranean Sea and all the lands surrounding it that have a Mediterranean-type climate (MTC). The Mediterranean Basin is about long, from Lebanon in the east to Portugal in the west, and about wide, from Morocco and Libya in the south to Italy in the north. The region contains about 1.6% of the world's dry land but has about 10% of the known vascular plant species, with over 25,000 identified to date. More than half of them are endemic. The biogeographic origins of the non-indigenous plants of the region include northern and central Eurasia, southwest and central Asia, North Africa, Arabia and the tropics of Africa. For example, the Mediterranean species of the ''
Androcymbium ''Colchicum'' ( or ) is a genus of perennial flowering plants containing around 160 species which grow from bulb-like corms. It is a member of the botanical family Colchicaceae, and is native to West Asia, Europe, parts of the Mediterranean coa ...
'' genus migrated northward from tropical Africa via the Eastern African mountain ranges to reach the Mediterranean in the
Middle Miocene The Middle Miocene is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages: the Langhian and Serravallian stages. The Middle Miocene is preceded by the Early Miocene. The sub-epoch lasted from 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma to 11.608 ± 0.005 Ma (million y ...
, at a time when the climate was quite different from today. Molecular
phylogeography Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...
is starting to give new insights into the origins and evolution of Mediterranean species.


Mediterranean Sea

An analysis of literature has found about 17,000 marine species recorded as occurring in the Mediterranean Sea. This estimate is probably low, with microbes significantly under-reported, and with large gaps in knowledge of the deep sea areas and the southern and eastern part of the sea. Biodiversity is generally greater in the coastal and shallow regions, lower in deeper areas. The ecology is threatened by habitat loss or degradation from fishing, pollution, climate change,
eutrophication Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phytopla ...
and alien species.


Notes


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * {{authority control Mediterranean Sea Biogeography