Endemism

Endemism

The term endemism refers to the phenomenon for which a species is characteristic of a specific geographically delimited environment where it spontaneously spread, remaining enclosed in more or less narrow boundaries due to natural, geographical or catastrophic events.
Endemism is therefore the phenomenon for which some plant or animal species are exclusive to a given territory. Although, technically, the term endemism can also be applied to very vast territories, such as entire continents (for example, armadillos are endemic to America), the endemisms relating to very restricted ranges such as insular ones, sometimes extended only for a few, are interesting. square kilometer.
The term endemism was first used in botany in 1820 by the Swiss naturalist Augustin Pyramus De Candolle, who took it from medical terminology.
The main categories of endemism are:

– paleoendemism, used to indicate species formerly widespread in wide ranges, but for some reason disappeared in most of the original range, so that today (or until recently) they can only be found in restricted environments;
– neo-endemism, used in reference to species of relatively recent appearance in certain environments, for example following ancestral hybridization with other species;
– schizoendemism, when some species, often due to a geographical isolation, differ from the primitive one, vegetating in different areas of the original range.
On the other hand, we speak of point-like endemism when the range of the species is limited to a small environment without the possibility of natural expansion of the same; examples of Italian point-like endemisms are the Carpione del Garda and the Carpione del Fibreno, as well as almost all the cave fauna. Point-like endemics often run a serious risk of extinction.