A recent find of Ophrys insectifera ( Orchidaceae ) in Ukraine – will it survive another 100 years?

. Here I report the first find of Ophrys insectifera in Ukraine since 1920. A single individual was found at its last recorded site, Chortova Hora near Rohatyn (Ivano-Frankivsk Region). The species occurs in a steppe meadow habitat situated in the lower part of a steep northern slope. Local vegetation may be classified to a broadly circumscribed association Brachypodio pinnati-Molinietum arundinaceae from the alliance Cirsio-Brachypodion pinnati (class Festuco-Brometea ). I discuss possible causes of the long-term neglect of O. insectifera at the site, its habitat conditions and suitable conservation management. To ensure the continued occurrence of this poor competitor and other rare species, it is necessary to prevent accumulation of litter and successional changes of the grassland. Mowing, low-intensity grazing, controlled early spring burning or their combination may be suitable ways to achieve this.


Introduction
Ophrys insectifera L. (Orchidaceae) is the most northerly distributed Ophrys species, with the range centred in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and extending to the British Isles, Baltic region, and Fennoscandia.In the south it reaches the Iberian, Apennine and Balkan peninsulas (Meusel et al., 1965(Meusel et al., -1992)).In Eastern Europe it is rare, but reaches up to the South Urals (Galeyeva, 2006).Across its distribution range it favours calcareous habitats of various kinds, mainly nutrient poor semi-dry and mesic grasslands, thermophilous scrub, and open and semi-open woodlands, often dominated by pine.It may tolerate deeper shade in calcicolous beech woodlands (Stroh, 2015), and towards the western, northern, and eastern periphery of its distribution range it increasingly occupies calcareous wetlands (Wolff, 1951;Galeyeva, 2006;Roze et al., 2011;Stroh, 2015).While it is classified as Least Concern in the IUCN Red List (Rankou, 2011), it has retreated in many parts of its distribution range and is evaluated, e.g., as Critically Endangered in Bulgaria (Petrova, Vladimirov, 2009) and Denmark (Wind, 2019), Endangered in the Czech Republic (Grulich, Chobot, 2017) and Finland (Hyvärinen et al., 2019), Vulnerable in Poland (Kaźmierczakowa et al., 2016), Germany (Metzing et al., 2018), and Switzerland (Bornand et al., 2016), Declining in Russia (Bardunov, Novikov, 2008), and Rare in Romania (Oltean et al., 1994).
In Ukraine the species has always been very rare and a single documented record comes from Chortova Hora near Rohatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk Region (Kagalo, 2009).The species was found there in May 1920 by a Polish botanist S. Wierdak and the corresponding specimens are deposited in the Herbarium of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (Dmytrash-Vatseba, 2018;Shumska, Dmytrash-Vatseba, 2018) and the Herbarium of the W. Szafer Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow (B.Paszko, in litt.).The occurrence was never confirmed and the species was considered probably extinct there (Dmytrash-Vatseba, 2018).Other records in Ukraine are even older and are based only on literature data.They all come from the western part of the country, including the Eastern Carpathians (Bukovynian Carpathians, Gorgany), Northern Podillia, Opillia, and Roztochia (Kagalo, 2009;Chorney et al., 2010).Thus, the species has not been recorded in the territory of Ukraine for a century and is included in the Red Data Book of Ukraine with the highest category of threat, as Disappearing (Kagalo, 2009).
Here we report a recent find of O. insectifera in Ukraine, describe its habitat conditions, discuss possible causes of its long-term neglect, and propose suitable conservation management.

Study area
Chortova Hora (333 m a.s.l.) is a famous hill and a natural site near the town of Rohatyn in the western part of Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk Region).It is an inselberg, rising above the plateau between the valleys of the Hnyla Lypa and Studenyi Potik rivers.Its bedrock is formed of calcareous marls to clayey limestones of the Cretaceous age, overlain by Neogene gypsum (Gerasimov et al., 2004).The site is protected since 1936 (Haydukevych, 2016), in the present form since 1975 as a Botanical Nature Monument of national importance with the area of 13 ha (Zamoroka et al., 2018).
The hill is a part of the physiographic region of Rohatyn Opillia, which belongs to a broader region of the Volyno-Podolian Upland.The surrounding landscape is hilly, with elevations between 250 and 430 m a.s.l.Mesophilous forests dominated by Quercus robur, Carpinus betulus, and Fagus sylvatica prevail in nearnatural vegetation.Species-rich steppe grasslands and calcareous fens are scattered throughout the region, containing many habitat specialists and rare species, indicating a long history of open landscape.

Methods
Taxonomic concepts and nomenclature of vascular plant taxa mainly follow Euro+Med PlantBase (2006onward).Syntaxonomic nomenclature follows Mucina et al. (2016) down to the alliance level and Willner et al. (2019) at the association level.

Results
Recent occurrence of Ophrys insectifera at Chortova Hora was recorded on 3 June 2019.A single individual was noticed in the steppe meadow situated in the lower part of a steep northern slope.Documentary photos of the plant were taken (Fig. 1) and geographical coordinates were recorded (49°24′11.0″N, 24°39′53.8″E).The site has not been thoroughly searched due to limited time, so the occurrence of more individuals cannot be ruled out.

New find
The find reported here confirms the occurrence of Ophrys insectifera at Chortova Hora and whole Ukraine after 99 years.I assume the species was overlooked and was continuously present at the site, despite frequent visits by botanists.The small population size and perhaps also irregularity in flowering (Dorland, Willems, 2002) may have contributed to the neglect.Moreover, suitability of available habitats at Chortova Hora for the species is questionable.While steppe grasslands on the sun-exposed slopes may be too dry, grasslands on a shady slope may be too tall and closed, leaving little space for this lowgrowing species.Stands of the kind where Ophrys was found, with lower cover of herbs and grasses and high abundance of competitively inferior mesophilous species (e.g.Gymnadenia conopsea and Ranunculus breyninus), are less abundant on the shady slope and should preferably be explored when searching for the species.

Conservation management
The vegetation on the northern slope of Chortova Hora may be classified to a broadly circumscribed association Brachypodio pinnati-Molinietum arundinaceae from the alliance Cirsio-Brachypodion pinnati (class Festuco-Brometea) (Roleček et al., 2019;Willner et al., 2019).This type of dry-mesic steppe meadows is very species rich, but at the same highly productive, and thus preservation of its plant diversity requires regular biomass removal, which was historically done mainly through mowing (Roleček et al., 2014).Also, the grasslands at Chortova Hora used to be utilized for haymaking, probably combined with grazing (Haydukevych, 2016;Zamoroka et al., 2018).Recently, however, none of these management forms was applied and biomass removal was done through off-season grassland burning.During my last visits in 2019 and 2021, I have not observed any traces of burning, while litter accumulation was apparent.