Fostering conservation of alpine plants through taxonomical and ecological knowledge

Alpine ecosystems host a high proportion of Europe’s plant diversity and endemism, yet they are among the environments most rapidly affected by climate change and land-use transitions. Rising temperatures, altered snow regimes, and changes in disturbance and management practices are reshaping alpine landscapes, with consequences for microhabitat availability, community structure, and population persistence. In this context, alpine plant conservation increasingly requires integrated strategies that combine in situ protection with ex situ and quasi in situ approaches, supported by taxonomic clarity and species-specific ecological knowledge. This thesis develops a life-cycle–based and scale-integrated framework for alpine plant conservation by linking conservation infrastructures, taxonomy, functional ecology, and regeneration biology, using the European Alps as a model system. Across four interconnected chapters, it examines how alpine plant genetic resources are conserved, how taxonomic entities are defined and stabilised, how narrow endemics function within heterogeneous environments, and how early life stages mediate persistence under changing conditions. The first chapter evaluates Alpine Botanical Gardens as a coordinated network of living collections, showing that they preserve a substantial fraction of the alpine flora, including threatened and endemic taxa, while also revealing limitations related to uneven taxonomic coverage, incomplete integration with germplasm banks, and gaps in knowledge of germination requirements. The second chapter demonstrates that taxonomic stability, supported by typification and adequate herbarium representation, is a prerequisite for reliable biodiversity data and effective conservation planning. The third chapter shows that narrow alpine endemics combine ecological specialisation with functional plasticity at fine spatial scales, reflecting strong microhabitat filtering rather than uniform responses to broad climatic gradients. The fourth chapter highlights regeneration as a critical bottleneck, demonstrating that germination behaviour varies among populations in response to microclimatic conditions and maternal environmental effects. Together, these results show that effective alpine plant conservation cannot rely on isolated approaches. Integrating taxonomic rigour, functional ecology, regeneration biology, and coordinated conservation infrastructures is essential to move from descriptive inventories toward predictive and operational strategies capable of safeguarding alpine plant diversity under accelerating environmental change.