MeTzgeRIa CONjUgaTa (MARCHANTIOPHYTA, METZGERIACEAE) IN THE POLISH CARPATHIANS: DISTRIBUTION, ECOLOGY AND THREATS RobeRt zubel 1 AdAm stebel 2 And piotR góRski 3 1 Department of Botany and Mycology, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, ul. Akademicka 19, 20-033 Lublin, Poland; e-mail: robert.zubel@poczta.umcs.lublin.pl 2 Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Medical University of Silesia in Katowice, ul. Ostrogórska 30, 41-200 Sosnowiec, Poland; e-mail: astebel@farmant.slam.katowice.pl 3 Department of Botany, Poznań University of Life Sciences, ul. Wojska Polskiego 71c, 60-625 Poznań, Poland; e-mail: peter@up.poznan.pl Abstract. This paper provides information about the current distribution of the threatened liverwort species Metzgeria conjugata Lindb. in the Polish part of the Carpathians. At present M. conjugata is known there from 395 stations located in 76 Atmos grid squares. Most of its stations (58.2%) have been found at elevations between 600 and 800 m. M. conjugata grows mainly in epilithic and epiphytic sites (respectively 62.2% and 30.3% of all stations) almost always in afforested places. It also occurs very rarely on mineral soil and sporadically on rot- ten wood (together 7.5% of all localities). A full list of localities of M. conjugata in the Polish Carpathians is given and its general distribution on this area is mapped. In the light of our studies the species seems not to be threatened in the whole investigated area. Furthermore the distribution patterns of the species in a particular studied mountain ranges show that M. con- jugata is also fairly frequent in a local scale. Key words. Metzgeria conjugata, liverworts, threatened taxa, distribution, Carpathians, Po- land INTRODUCTION Metzgeria conjugata Lindb. (Fig. 1) is a suboceanic-montane species, having a very wide Holarctic distribution range extending to the Southern Hemisphere (Dierßen 2001; Damsholt 2002). In Europe it occurs fairly frequently throughout the whole continent except for some countries and islands around or in the Mediterranean, e.g. Albania, Cor- sica, Sicily, Croatia and the European part of Turkey. It is also absent from the Azores From stebel, A. & R. oChyRA (eds), Chorological Studies on Polish Carpathian Bryophytes, Sorus, Poznań: pp. 133–154 (2011).