The fauna of Europe is all the animals living in Europe and its surrounding seas and islands. Europe is the western part of the Palearctic realm (which in turn is part of the Holarctic). Lying within the temperate region, (north of the equator) the wildlife is not as rich as in the hottest regions, but is nevertheless diverse due to the variety of habitats and the faunal richness of Eurasia as a whole.
Before the arrival of humans European fauna was more diverse and widespread than today. The European megafauna of today is much reduced from its former numbers. The Holocene extinction drastically reduced numbers and distribution of megafauna and continues to (such as with wolves and bears). Many of these species still exist in smaller numbers, while others thrive in the developed continent free from natural predators, with the former threatened by human activity (particularly megafaunal species).
Origins of European fauna
The formation of the European fauna began in the Mesozoic with the splitting of the Laurasian supercontinent and was eventually separated from both North America and Asia in the Eocene. During the early Cenozoic, the continents approached their present configuration, Europe experienced periods of land connection to North America via Greenland, resulting in colonization by North American animals. In these times, higher sea levels sometimes fragmented Europe into island subcontinents. As time passed, sea levels fell, with seas retreating from the plains of western Russia, establishing the modern connection to Asia (Priabonian). Asian animal species then colonized Europe in large numbers, and many endemic European lineages (e.g. primates) died out ("grande coupure").
The cyclic changes of the Pleistocene between cold and warm periods resulted in antagonistic responses within two different groups of organisms: one expanding during the warm periods and retracting during the cold phases and another with opposed responses (the latter group is composed of so-called arctic and alpine species).[1]
Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Tree species spread outward from refugia during interglacial periods, but in varied patterns, with different trees dominating in different periods.[2] Insects, on the other hand, shifted their ranges with the climate, maintaining consistency in species for the most part throughout the period (Coope 1994). Their high degree of mobility allowed them to move as the glaciers advanced or retreated, maintaining a constant habitat despite the climatic oscillations. Mammals recolonized at varying rates. Brown bears, for instance, moved quickly from refugia with the receding glaciers, becoming one of the first large mammals to recolonize the land.[3] The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago, resulting in the present distribution of ecoregions.
The Baltic Sea is an ecological island, isolated from other brackish seas by both land
and fully marine seas.[7] The low salinity of the Baltic Sea has led to the evolution of many slightly divergent species, such as the Baltic Sea herring, which is a smaller variant of the Atlantic herring. The most frequent benthic species are Saduria entomon and Monoporeia affinis, which is originally a freshwater species. A great part of its bottom is anoxic and without animal life.
The Baltic Sea and North Sea are also home to a variety of marine mammals (common seals, grey seals).
Freshwater
Europe contains several important freshwater ecoregions, including the heavily developed rivers of Europe, the rivers of Russia, which flow into the Arctic, Baltic, Black, and Caspian seas. There are about 15,000 known European freshwater animal species.[8]
Arctic tundra
Arctic tundra is the northernmost (and coldest) of European habitats, in extreme northern Scandinavia, Svalbard archipelago, northernmost part of Russia. Some typical animals include reindeer, Arctic fox, brown bear, ermine, lemmings, partridges, snowy owl and many insects. Most tundra animals undergo hibernation during the colder season. Iceland is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean with very scarce land fauna. The only native land mammal when humans arrived was the Arctic fox. There are no native reptiles or amphibians on the island, but a rich marine fauna live in the ocean waters around it.
Forests
Eighty to ninety per cent of Europe was once covered by forest. It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Though over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the boreal forests of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean.
In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate.
The cutting down of the pre-agricultural forest habitat has caused major disruptions to the original animal ecosystems, and only few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time.
The mountain regions have peculiar fauna relatively little influenced by human activities.
The northernmost are the Scandinavian mountains. Pyrenees present many instances of endemism. The Pyrenean desman is found only in some of the streams of the northern slopes of these mountains, Pyrenean brook salamander also lives in streams and lakes located at high altitudes. Among the other peculiarities of the Pyrenean fauna are blind insects in the caverns of Ariège (Anophthalmus, Adelops). The Pyrenean ibex mysteriously became extinct in 2000; the native Pyrenean brown bear was hunted to near-extinction in the 1990s but was re-introduced in 1996.
Some common animals of the Alps are Alpine ibex, Alpine marmot, Tengmalm's owl and ptarmigan. The Apennine Mountains provide habitat to Marsican brown bear and the Italian wolf. The Carpathian Mountains are a range of mountains forming an arc of roughly 1,500 km across Central and Eastern Europe and are inhabited by the largest populations in Europe of brown bears, wolves and lynxes, as well as chamois and other animals.
Mediterranean
Formerly the region was mostly covered with forests and woodlands, but heavy human use has reduced much of the region to the sclerophyll shrublands known as chaparral, matorral, maquis, or garrigue. The loss of native forests had significant impact on biodiversity, with some 90% of the endemic mammalian genera of the Mediterranean becoming extinct after the development of agriculture.[9]Conservation International has designated the Mediterranean basin as one of the world's biodiversity hotspots.
As to the marine fauna, there are strong affinities and relationships between Mediterranean and Atlantic faunas. The deep-water fauna of the Mediterranean has no distinctive characteristics and is relatively poor. Both are a result of events after the Messinian salinity crisis.[10] An invasion of Indian Ocean species has begun via the Suez Canal (see Lessepsian migration). Many species, (such as the Mediterranean monk seal) are critically endangered.
Invertebrates
About 100,000 invertebrate species (including insects) are known from Europe.[11] The marine species richness is greatest in the Mediterranean with 600 sponge species (45% of them endemic), 143 known species of Echinoderms and about 500 species of Cnidarians.[12] Almost 1000 species of oligochaetes live in Europe.
There are about 1500 species of non-marine molluscs in Europe. The marine fauna is again richest in the Mediterranean region (2000 marine mollusc species).[13] 22 species and 3 subspecies of gastropods are extinct in Europe since the year 1500.[14] No species of bivalves are known to be extinct in Europe since 1500.[14]
About 600 species of butterflies and about 8000 species of moths live in Europe. An estimated 18% of all European butterfly species are considered to be vulnerable to or imminently faced with extinction.[18]
Of the 589 species of birds (excluding seabirds) that breed in the Palearctic, 40% spend the winter elsewhere. Of those species that leave for the winter, 98% travel south to Africa.[25]
European mammal fauna consists of 270 species, 78 of them endemic to Europe[19] (15% of them are threatened with extinction and 27% have been identified as declining).[26] There are no endemic mammal orders in the region.
Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man. The main causes of biodiversity loss are changes in natural habitats due to intensive agricultural production, construction and extractive industries, over exploitation of habitats and invasions and introductions of alien species.
With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks. There are over 26,000 protected areas in the European Union covering a total area of around 850.000 km2 (more than 20% of total EU territory; see also Natura 2000).[30]
15% of the Alps are protected in parks and reserves, as well as many areas in the Carpathians (Retezat National Park).
The coasts of the North Sea are home to nature reserves including the Ythan Estuary, Fowlsheugh Nature Preserve, and Farne Islands in the UK and The Wadden Sea National Parks in Germany. Białowieża Forest is the only remaining part of the immense forest which once spread across the European Plain. The Danube Delta is the second largest delta in Europe, (after the Volga Delta) and the best preserved on the continent. The Camargue Nature Reserve is another important delta nature reserve. Doñana National Park is a national park and wildlife refuge in southwestern Spain.
Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Bern Convention, which has been signed by the European Community as well as non-European states. The European Union has adopted the ambitious target of halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010.[31]
^Taberlet, P.; R. Cheddadi 2002. "Quaternary Refugia and Persistence of Biodiversity" (In Science's Compass; Perspectives). Science, New Series 297:5589:2009-2010
^Sommer, R. S.; N. Benecke. 2005. "The recolonization of Europe by brown bears Ursus arctos Linnaeus, 1758 after the Last Glacial Maximum". Mammal Review 35:2:156-164
^M.D. Spalding et al., "Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas", BioScience Vol.57 No.7, 2007
^E.Leppäloski, "Living in a sea of exotics – the Baltic case". (in: Aquatic Invasions in the Black, Caspian, and Mediterranean Seas, ed. H.Dumont et al.) Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004
^ETI CD-ROM European Limnofauna (Visser and Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 2000)
^Sondaar, P.Y. Insularity and its effect on mammal evolution. In Major Patterns in Vertebrate Evolution (M.K. Hecht, R.C. Goody and B.M.Hecht, eds) New York, Plenum (1977)
^Emig C.C. & Geistdoerfer P. (2004). The Mediterranean deep-sea fauna: historical evolution, bathymetric variations and geographical changes. Carnets de Géologie / Notebooks on Geology.
^Wieringa, K. (ed.) 1995. Environment in the European Union 1995: Report for the Review of the Fifth Environmental Action Programme. European Environment Agency / EUROSTAT
^Giannuzzi-Savelli R. et al. (1997). Atlas of the Mediterranean Sea Shells. Edizioni di "La Conchiglia", Roma.
^ abFontaine B., Bouchet P., Van Achterberg K., Alonso-Zarazaga M. A., Araujo R. et al. (2007). "The European union's 2010 target: Putting rare species in focus." Biological Conservation139: 167-185. Table 2 on the page 173. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2007.06.012. PDF.
^Platnick, N. I. (2007). The World Spider Catalogue- Version 8.0
^G.A.Polis, The Biology of Scorpions, Stanford University Press (1990)
^Temple H.J. & Terry A. (Compilers). (2007). The Status and Distribution of European Mammals. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
^A. J. Mitchell-Jones (Ed.), G. Amori (Ed.), W. Bogdanowicz (Ed.), B. Krystufek (Ed.), P. Reijnders (Ed.), The Atlas of European Mammals. T. & A. D. Poyser Ltd. (1999)