The Southern Blue Ridge Mountain Ecoregion has had a unique role through deep time in maintaining and generating biodiversity in all terrestrial and freshwater aquatic organism groups. Acting as a refugium through past climate changes, the Southern Blue Ridge has retained lineages that then expand out into and enrich the biota throughout eastern North America. We will explore the importance of this history, and the past and present conservation challenges and successes that have made this one of the most intact ecoregions in eastern North America. Along the way, we’ll explore examples of special habitats and organisms for which the Southern Blue Ridge has been critical: alpine, serpentine, temperate rainforests, vertical wetlands, cove forests, lampshade spiders, salamanders (giant, arboreal, and otherwise), pitcherplants, heaths, trilliums, and the list goes on!
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