Format: ORAL

Lovanomenjanahary MARLINE1,2,3,Rivoharifara Randrianarimanana2,4, Rhian SMITH1, Alexandre ANTONELLI1,5,6,7

1 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK 2 Kew Madagascar Conservation Centre, Antananarivo, Madagascar 3 Association Vahatra, Antananarivo, Madagascar 4 Mention Biologie et Ecologie Végétales, Université d’Antananarivo, Antananarivo, Madagascar 5 Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden 6 Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China 7 Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX13QY, UK

Madagascar is a global biodiversity hotspot, with some of the highest levels of diversity and endemism on the planet. Its high mountain massifs are remarkable for having a higher degree of regional endemism, often localized to an individual massif. Madagascars exceptional biodiversity has motivated many studies; however, they have not been evenly distributed and many groups of organisms remain poorly studied. Bryophytes are among the least documented of the Malagasy biodiversity. We conducted detailed analyses of bryophyte communities along elevational gradients in three high mountains in Madagascar to describe the hidden but important biodiversity of bryophyte and understand bryophyte community structure along elevational gradients. We explored Tsaratanana Integral reserve, North-western Madagascar (2888m), Andohahela national park, South-eastern Madagascar (1956m) and Marojejy National Park North-eastern Madagascar (2130m). Preliminary observation shows a diverse and abundant community of bryophytes. Overall, species richness is exhibiting a hump-shaped pattern along elevation gradients, peaking at mid-elevation. Preliminary analyses of the bryophyte community indicate that most species have a narrow range of elevational distribution and are specialized to a particular microhabitat. At higher taxonomic rank, many genera and families also have a narrow range of elevational distribution and microhabitat preferences. This implies that microhabitat preferences are taxonomically structured. This investigation constitutes a significant biodiversity resource that will be used in a range of contexts such as taxonomic revision of the many understudied and likely to be misidentified group of bryophytes. And given that there are no existing molecular databases on the bryophytes of Madagascar, new bryophytes collections from those unique sites have been considered for molecular analysis, especially leveraging next-generation sequencing technologies.