Format: ORAL

Stela Vlajos-Gmez1,2, Pablo Tejero2, Sara Palacio2, Juan Lorite3, Mart March-Salas4,5

1 Faculty of Science, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), C/ Darwin, 2, 28049, Madrid, Spain 2 Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC), Av. Nuestra Señora de la Victoria 16, 22700 Jaca, Huesca, Spain 3 Department of Botany, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada (UGR), Granada, Spain 4 Plant Evolutionary Ecology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt. Max-von-Laue-Str. 13, 60438, Frankfurt am Main, Germany 5 Area of Biodiversity and Conservation, Department of Biology and Geology, Physics and Inorganic Chemistry. University Rey Juan Carlos-ESCET, Tulipán s/n. 28933 Móstoles, Madrid, Spain

Mediterranean cliffs host unique plant communities composed of taxa with a great adaptive capacity to the severe environmental conditions of these ecosystems. For millions of years, cliffs have been acting as climatic and ecological refugia for an outstanding diversity of species, promoting their specialization. This led to species of high evolutionary interest, which may show high differentiation from their sister generalist relatives. Yet, little is known about these diversification processes promoted by the specialization of plants in cliff ecosystems. In this study, we focus on plants appearing on cliffs of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, within the plant diversity hotspot of the Mediterranean region. The aim is to investigate their cliff-affinity and relevant functional traits from a phylogenetic perspective. We extracted a list of 1,398 Iberian taxa of vascular plants potentially inhabiting cliffs from the reference work for the flora of the study area, Flora iberica. To evaluate their degree of cliff-affinity, we contacted 94 experts. A total of 32% of the taxa had cliffs as their preferred habitat and we confirmed that 127 species (9%) grow exclusively on cliffs. As cliff-specialist plants may present a series of efficient strategies and traits to survive in cliffs, we also gathered different ecologically relevant traits for all species, including plant-size, seed-size, flowering period and altitude range of distribution. After reconstructing a PHYLOMAKER based phylogeny with the majority of the listed taxa, the phylogenetic signal regarding cliff-affinity and selected traits was tested. We also investigated the effect that the degree of affinity has on the different relevant traits under a phylogenetic perspective. Our contribution will present and discuss the resulting phylogenetic patterns, helping to improve the understanding of the processes leading to cliff specialization in Iberian flora, and unravelling evolutionary divergences in cliff ecosystems.