milanchytry.bsky.social
Plant community ecology | Botany | Vegetation science | Natural habitats | Macroecology | Biodiversity | Conservation | Global change | Scientific publishing || Professor @ Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia
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The full record of the talk is available on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4zk...
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🐜 One of the inhabitants of our willows is the jet-black ant (Lasius fuliginosus), known for tending aphids and cultivating fungi.
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🌳 In the past, such microhabitats were common on old trees in pasture woodlands and on trees that were regularly pollarded for firewood. Today, old and pollarded trees are rare. That’s why pollarding willows and other trees is a great way to restore missing habitats for many species.
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📖 Full open-access article:
🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...
@franzessl1.bsky.social
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In contrast to neophytes, the quantity of archaeophytes remained stable.
This study confirms that arable land is an important habitat for the spread of neophytes. However, neophyte increase is largely driven by a few common species, e.g. Veronica persica and Galinsoga quadriradiata.
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The quantities of neophytes approximately doubled from 1930 to 2019:
📈 The plots containing at least one neophyte species: 34% → 70%
📈 The number of neophyte species, relative to all species in a plot: 6% → 10%
📈 The cover of neophyte species, relative to the total plant cover in a plot: 4% → 10%
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This combination of overgrazing and climate change is inevitably leading to the desertification of large landscapes. 🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐🐐
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Intensive grazing and erosion have continued ever since. The human population in Morocco has more than tripled since 1960, which has led to even greater grazing pressure. In the same period, rainfall has decreased by more than 16% and is projected to continue to decrease.
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Palaeoecologists (doi.org/10.1016/j.qu...) suggest that land degradation began in the 8th century when Arabs settled in the area. The increase in pastoralism reduced forest cover and increased soil erosion. Only argan trees were protected by the locals as a source of fruit for oil production.
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Agree, but looking at the overall species richness only could be misleading, as it can mask the continuing loss of habitat quality. Specialists can be (and often are) replaced by generalists while richness remains more or less constant.
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📄🔓Open-access article: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
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🌳🌾Habitat-specific changes: Some trends differed between habitat types. For example, wet habitats tended to become drier, while dry habitats became slightly wetter due to successional processes. This indicates increasing homogenization of species composition between habitat types.
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🔍 Main drivers of change: Eutrophication, climate change, changes in the hydrological regime and vegetation succession following the abandonment of traditional land management.
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📉 Losers: Non-clonal herbs, plants with scleromorphic or helomorphic leaves, apomictic and insect-pollinated plants, light-demanding plants and habitat specialists.
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📈 Winners: Trees, shrubs, grasses, tall plants, plants with mesomorphic leaves, allogamous plants, plants adapted to the dispersal by animals, nutrient-demanding plants and those adapted to rapid colonization of newly disturbed areas.
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The study is based on the largest synthesis of all available data on vegetation change in the Czech Republic over time, including data from repeated sampling of 1154 vegetation plots from 53 previous studies.
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When we drive on Czech highways now, we see the same picture. In less than 20 years, the ragwort has taken over the Czech main roads and starts to spread into natural habitats. The map from 2018, prepared by M. Ducháček, P. Kocián & P. Kúr (in Kaplan et al., Preslia), is already outdated.
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I took this photo in 2004 on a highway in SW Germany. Yellow stands of this South African ragwort lined the highways for hundreds of kilometers. It was worth taking a photo break at that time because we had never seen anything like that in Czechia, where this ragwort was first recorded in 1997.
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👉 Want all the details? Read the full article here:
doi.org/10.1007/s109...
#Ecology 🌿 #Grasslands 🌾 #HistoricalLandUse 📜 #PlantCommunities 🌱 #LandscapeEcology 🌍 #EnvironmentalResearch 🔬 #Biodiversity 🌸 #HistoricalEcology 🕰️
@adamtclark.bsky.social @franzessl1.bsky.social
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🔎 What did we discover?
Grasslands that were once 🌳 forests tend to have more plant species that need less light and are less adapted to frequent disturbances.
Grasslands that were 🏘️ settlements in the 19th century tend to have more species that thrive in disturbed conditions.
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We studied grasslands in Czechia, Austria, and Slovakia, using historical maps to uncover their past: 🌾 arable land, 🌳 forests, 🌱 grasslands, 🍇 permanent crops, 🏘️ settlements, or 💧 water bodies.
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🌱 I hope this will end destructive practices, such as the destruction of floodplain forest biodiversity through clear-cutting, soil grinding, herbicide application, and the destruction of the original rich herbaceous layer. As a result, invasive plant species often take over.
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Curious to learn more? Dive into our arguments in the full editorial or on the VegSciBlog! 🌱
📖 Editorial: doi.org/10.1111/avsc...
✍️ Blog: vegsciblog.org/2025/01/04/o...
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2️⃣ Overuse of genus abbreviations: Abbreviating genus names might save a tiny bit of space, but in articles dealing with many taxa, it often creates confusion and makes articles harder to read.
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1️⃣ Redundancy in the use of author citations for taxon names: Rather than adding the author of the original description to each taxon name, articles should consistently refer to modern taxonomic monographs or checklists for both taxon concepts and names.
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Symphyotrichum lanceolatum (astřička kopinatá). An invasive alien plant from North America.
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More pictures from the JVS/AVS Photo Contest are shown on VegSciBlog:
vegsciblog.org/2025/01/01/r...
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The AVS cover picture shows the floating mat in the Chabannes bog in Corrèze, France, resulting from the water-retention infrastructure installed in the 1980s, which lifted the bog off the bottom.
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The JVS cover picture shows an alpine grassland on Mount Raduha in the Kamnik-Savinja Alps (Slovenia), which occurs on limestone with a significant admixture of siliceous minerals, resulting in a species-rich plant community consisting of both acidophilous and basiphilous plants.
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Jsem rád, že pro další funkční období se řízení ústavu ujal zkušený odborník a učitel s rozsáhlými manažerskými zkušenostmi, doc. Jan Zukal. Přeji Honzovi hodně úspěchů, co nejméně problémů a radost z dalšího rozvoje našeho ústavu.
Všem přeji krásný nový rok plný úspěchů a pohody!
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Chtěl bych poděkovat všem kolegům, kteří se během posledních osmi let aktivně podíleli na zlepšování a rozšiřování činností ústavu - od výuky a vědeckého bádání po technickou a administrativní podporu a péči o dobré vztahy na našich pracovištích. Vaše práce je velmi cenná a vážím si jí.
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Výměny ředitelů přinášejí do systému novou energii, nápady a podporují pokrok. Do třetího funkčního období jsem proto nekandidoval.