A bibliographic review on vascular flora of Italian volcanic lakes

Although wetlands cover only a small area worldwide, they are rich reservoirs of biodiversity and provide valuable ecosystem services. Nevertheless, wetlands are severely threatened by human activities that modify their structure and functionality, with serious consequences on native diversity. In such vulnerable environments, it is important to adequately characterize their biodiversity to understand the ongoing processes and enable timely management interventions. This review aims to provide the state of floristic knowledge of Italian volcanic lakes, a major freshwater system in the Mediterranean basin. All relevant botanic literature produced to date on these lakes was collected and evaluated from a multispatial and temporal perspective. In total, 982 taxa of vascular plants, including 99 aliens, were recorded in the literature. Of these, 215 taxa are closely related to the wetland environment, including aquatic and shore habitat. The floristic explorations range discontinuously from the first half of the 19th century to the present, but 75% of the contributions were published between 1980 and 2010. Of the available literature, 75% of the contributions report only a few taxa. Lakes Vico and Bracciano have high plant diversity, whereas a low number of taxa was reported for Lakes Giulianello, Martignano, and Mezzano. Remarkably, for Bolsena, Europe’s largest volcanic lake, a limited number of taxa was reported. Overall, floristic information on Italian volcanic lakes is fragmentary and often outdated, especially for plants occurring along the shores, suggesting the need for integrative floristic studies to update and supplement this knowledge.