Balkan biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales - patterns and mechanisms driving vascular plant diversity

The Balkan Peninsula, as part of Mediterranean Europe, is a region of exceptionally rich biodiversity and thus an area of high conservation value (HCVA), which is why it is recognized as a global biodiversity hot spot and global center of plant diversity.

Although the Balkan Peninsula is one of the centers of biodiversity in Europe, knowledge about its plant diversity is still scarce and incomplete. For this reason, the main objectives of the project focus on different levels (genes, species, ecosystems) and different aspects of spatial and temporal patterns of plant biodiversity in the Balkan Peninsula, mechanisms of spatio-temporal diversification as natural drivers that have led to the current biodiversity of the studied area, and biological invasions as human drivers of biodiversity loss.