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refugium

American  
[ri-fyoo-jee-uhm] / rɪˈfju dʒi əm /

noun

refugia plural
  1. an area where special environmental circumstances have enabled a species or a community of species to survive after extinction in surrounding areas.


refugium British  
/ rɪˈfjuːdʒɪəm /

noun

  1. a geographical region that has remained unaltered by a climatic change affecting surrounding regions and that therefore forms a haven for relict fauna and flora

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

Etymology

Origin of refugium

From Latin, dating back to 1900–05; see origin at refuge

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

“We expected Italy to be a climate refugium, but there’s a sharp and complete turnover—it’s a big surprise,” Posth says.

From Science Magazine Mar. 1, 2023

“It’s interesting to think about whether sub-Saharan African foragers were mapping onto a kind of refugium model.”

From Science Magazine Feb. 23, 2022

“The paleoecological data is consistent with the idea of a refugium, and the wood might be a key variable,” he said in an interview.

From New York Times Mar. 12, 2014

The region has been an Arctic refugium from warming due to the persistence of sea ice on Hudson Bay, the largest northern inland sea, that provides natural cooling.

From Scientific American Nov. 7, 2013

Nowadays it is happily no more than a refugium peccatorum.

From Donatello, by Lord Balcarres by Crawford, David Lindsay, Earl of

Altering the landscape could damage places that would otherwise serve as climate refugia under future climate conditions.

From Science Daily Mar. 8, 2024

The cooler sites, for example, could serve as refugia for organisms that otherwise could not withstand spiking temperatures.

From Science Magazine Nov. 1, 2023

“That doesn’t leave many refugia for these species to hide out in and recover and then repopulate and move back into the burned areas.”

From Los Angeles Times Jan. 11, 2019

Forest refugia in Western and Central Africa as ‘museums’ of Mesozoic biodiversity.

From Scientific American Jun. 10, 2018

In the savannas there are depressions, some of which contain water throughout the year; these are often surrounded by trees providing refugia for amphibians during the dry season.

From A Distributional Study of the Amphibians of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico by Duellman, William E.

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