Adam Petrusek

Charles University in Prague | CUNI · Department of Ecology (PF)

Abstract: Individual Acoustic Monitoring (IAM) can be a powerful and valuable tool, allowing to monitor individuals without a need to capture and mark them. They are identified based on recordings of their vocalisation. This study applies IAM to monitor a small population of water pipits (Anthus spinoletta), critically endangered in Czechia. Spec...

Abstract: Individual Acoustic Monitoring (IAM) can be a powerful and valuable tool, allowing to monitor individuals without a need to capture and mark them. They are identified based on recordings of their vocalisation. This study applies IAM to monitor a small population of water pipits (Anthus spinoletta), critically endangered in Czechia. Speci...

Freshwater crayfish are amongst the largest macroinvertebrates and play a keystone role in the ecosystems they occupy. Understanding the global distribution of these animals is often hindered due to a paucity of distributional data. Additionally, non-native crayfish introductions are becoming more frequent, which can cause severe environmental and...

Records count per crayfish taxa integrated in WoC platform.

Crayfish and A. astaci records integrated in WoC platform count per major hydrographic basins.

Crayfish and A. astaci records integrated in WoC platform count per country.

Daphnia (Crustacea: Cladocera) has been frequently used as a model taxon for studying prey antipredator defences. Among numerous representatives of this genus, there are several taxa within the subgenus Daphnia (Ctenodaphnia) with a morphological innovation unique for these cladocerans, a head plate. In some populations, the margin of this anterior...

Monachoides is a genus of medium-sized European land snails in the family Hygromiidae. Systematics of this family was until recently based on traits of the genital system that were shown to be uninformative, resulting in revisions of classifications at the genus and family levels. Up to six species were recognized in Monachoides lately, but the inc...

Dialects are a specific form of geographic variation of birdsong with relatively sharp boundaries between distinct song characteristics, which provide opportunities for focused studies of processes underlying the emergence of spatial patterns in vocalization. Several songbird species that exhibit dialects became models for such research, and for so...

Individual acoustic monitoring (IAM), based on the analysis of vocal cues, is particularly suitable for the identification and tracking of birds with temporally stable song or call characteristics. Unlike mark-recapture methods, IAM does not require the physical manipulation of individuals, which can have long-lasting behavioural effects. So far, I...

Aim Were postglacial recolonizations facilitated by persistence close to the colonized areas rather than by dispersal ability allowing for colonization from distant sources? This question is particularly relevant for organisms with low active dispersal abilities and lacking specialized propagules. Here we identified glacial refugia of four Central...

Climate change-related heatwaves are major threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, our current understanding of the mechanisms governing community resistance to and recovery from extreme temperature events is still rudimentary. The spatial insurance hypothesis postulates that diverse regional species pools can buffer ecosystem f...

from North America, not only threatens populations of endangered crayfish but also impacts their fisheries and aquaculture. This includes the narrow-clawed crayfish (Pontastacus leptodactylus) in Turkey, where its fishery and export used to grow until the mid-1980s when the accidental introduction of crayfish plague caused stock collapses. Although...

Recent discoveries of vast cryptic diversity among various aquatic invertebrates pose a challenge for understanding their ecology and biodiversity patterns, as well as for conservation. We studied the distribution, potential hybridization and habitat preferences of divergent lineages of the hyperdiverse Gammarus fossarum species complex (Crustacea:...

Climate change-related heatwaves are major recent threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, our current understanding of the mechanisms governing community resilience (resistance and recovery) to extreme temperature events is still rudimentary. The spatial insurance hypothesis postulates that diverse regional species pools can buf...

The widespread presence of North American alien crayfish in Europe is a major driver of native crayfish population declines, mainly because they are chronic carriers of the oomycete Aphanomyces astaci responsible for crayfish plague. Screening for the crayfish plague pathogen in host populations has become a common practice across Europe, but sampl...

Decades of research on geographic variation of birdsong have provided evidence that passerine vocalization often diverges among populations. We asked whether even songs so simple that they superficially resemble stridulating insects vary geographically. We focused on two closely related species of the genus Locustella, the River Warbler (L. fluviat...

Sequences of mitochondrial genes revolutionized the understanding of animal diversity and continue to be an important tool in biodiversity research. In the tribe Helicini, a prominent group of the western Palaearctic land snail fauna, mitochondrial data accumulating since the 2000s helped to newly delimit genera, inform species-level taxonomy and r...

Ringing is one of the most commonly used techniques to monitor bird individuals and collect data on various aspects of their life history. However, this method involves practices (capturing and handling) that might affect individuals' behaviour. Wild animals can remember and learn from previous experiences, and, thus, they anticipate risks and modi...

The article ‘No evidence for hybridization between Calanus finmarchicus and C. glacialis in a subarctic area of sympatry’ (Choquet et al. 2020) concludes that “no evidence supports a potential for hybridization between C. finmarchicus and C. glacialis”. We argue that the InDel markers used by Choquet et al. (2020) may have limited capacity to detec...

The oomycete Aphanomyces astaci is the etiologic agent of crayfish plague, a disease that has seriously impacted the populations of European native crayfish species. The introduction of non-indigenous crayfish of North American origin and their wide distribution across Europe have largely contributed to spread of crayfish plague in areas populated...

Ringing is the most common technique used for individual marking of passerine birds, informing understanding of many aspects of their behaviour and ecology. Birds caught for ringing may also be substantially handled before release (e.g. to obtain biometric data, blood or feather samples), and all such procedures may affect the subsequent behaviour...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-021-01889-7

Among the broad diversity of songbird vocalisations, song can serve a wide range of different functions depending on the species and context. In many species, aggressive motivation has often been linked with the use of fast repeated series of elements typically referred to as trills. However, only a few studies explored the role of this specific co...

Recent studies on diversity of stream amphipods proposed that the Western Carpathians have served as an important glacial refugium of freshwater fauna. If this scenario is true, a considerably high molecular diversity can be expected in this biogeographic region also for other taxa. In our project, we aimed to uncover and characterize molecular div...

Bioindication has become an indispensable part of water quality monitoring in most countries of the world, with the presence and abundance of bioindicator taxa, mostly multicellular eukaryotes, used for biotic indices. In contrast, microbes (bacteria, archaea and protists) are seldom used as bioindicators in routine assessments, although they have...

The Mediterranean basin is a major centre for land-snail diversity, with many localized endemics, but there are also species widely spread by humans. Both endemics and introductions can be found in the snail genus Helix, which comprises many large-bodied species used for human consumption in the past and present. The Mediterranean clade of Helix is...

RETRACTION: We have unfortunately discovered that key statistics and figures in the paper were created from a data matrix that did not fully correspond to the original birdsong recordings. While we believe the overall patterns may be valid (and we are convinced that the species is suitable for individual acoustic monitoring), the geospatial analyse...

Citation: Rusch JC, Mojžišová M, Strand DA, Svobodová J, Vrålstad T, Petrusek A (2020) Simultaneous detection of native and invasive crayfish and Aphanomyces astaci from environmental DNA samples in a wide range of habitats in Central Europe. NeoBiota, 58: 1-32. Abstract Crayfish of North American origin are amongst the most prominent high-impact...

Aphanomyces astaci is the causative agent of crayfish plague, a disease responsible for numerous mass mortalities of native crayfish across Europe. In this study, we aim to extend knowledge about the A. astaci distribution in Eastern Europe, with specific focus on the River Dnieper (Ukraine), and summarize presently available information about the...

The crayfish plague pathogen Aphanomyces astaci, which is among the most studied pathogens of aquatic invertebrates, co-evolved with North American crayfish species but threatens crayfish on other continents. The pathogen causes mass mortalities, particularly in Europe. In this study we document 12 crayfish plague outbreaks that occurred from 2014...

Gammarus roeselii is a common European amphipod, characterized by dorsal spines that defend against fish predation. Despite significant variability in spine length and number, the extent of this variation has never been quantified. Furthermore, widespread freshwater Gammarus taxa, including G. roeselii, are diverse species complexes, comprising num...

Exact locations of glacial refugia are relevant for the study of contemporary biodiversity, not only as places less disturbed during the climatic changes but also as sources of rapid expansion of the biota after the Last Glacial cycle. If continuously inhabited over several of the Quaternary glacial cycles, the refugia are readily identifiable by t...

The crayfish plague pathogen (Aphanomyces astaci) can be transmitted through the digestive system of fish, but its dispersal through mammalian and bird digestive tracts has been considered unlikely, and direct experimental evidence remains scarce. We present a small‐scale transmission experiment with European otter and American mink fed with infect...

The spatial distribution of suitable habitats and dispersal abilities of the constituent taxa jointly affect the structure of metacommunities in standing freshwaters. Most studies exploring spatial effects on aquatic metacommunities, however, focus on at most a few taxonomic groups. Within two consecutive seasons, we studied spatial patterns in the...

The causative agent of crayfish plague, Aphanomyces astaci Schikora, was long considered to be a specialist pathogen whose host range is limited to freshwater crayfish. Recent studies, however, provided evidence that this parasite does not only grow within the tissues of freshwater-inhabiting crabs but can also be successfully transmitted by them t...

RETRACTION: We have unfortunately discovered that key statistics and figures in the paper were created from a data matrix that did not fully correspond to the original birdsong recordings. While we believe the overall patterns may be valid (and we are convinced that the species is suitable for individual acoustic monitoring), the geospatial analyse...

The genus Aphanomyces (Oomycetes) comprises approximately 50 known species of water molds in three lineages. One of the most notorious is Aphanomyces astaci, the causative agent of crayfish plague. In this study, fresh isolates of Aphanomyces were collected from 20 live specimens of the signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana, 1852) from Lak...

The multidisciplinarity of integrative taxonomy is particularly useful for clarifying the systematics of speciose groups that are poorly differentiated morphologically, and this approach can also illuminate their evolutionary history and biogeography. Here, we utilize it to examine the systematics and taxonomy of a newly recognized amphipod species...

Song dialects, as a special case of geographic variation in vocalization, are useful tools in the study of a number of topics ranging from cultural evolution to the emergence of reproductive barriers, and thus continue to be the focus of many bird‐song studies. The Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella is a common Palaearctic bird with a long breeding s...

A complete mitochondrial genome of the Roman snail Helixpomatia Linnaeus, 1758 has been sequenced. The length and gene order correspond to that of other available helicid mitogenomes. We used the mitogenome sequence to reappraise the relationships among the four presumed principal groups of the helicid subfamily Helicinae. The results support the i...

Microsporidia are among the most common microparasites of cladocerans and have potentially significant impact on host populations. However, many of these pathogens are known only from molecular-based studies. We provide ultrastructural data supported by molecular phylogeny for a common microsporidium infecting the Daphnia longispina complex, import...

Background: The factual diversity of European freshwater crustaceans is scarcely known. This is particularly surprising taking into account their wide applicability in biomonitoring as well as in eco-toxicological and phylogeographical studies. Crustacea, particularly Malacostraca, play a fundamental role in functioning of freshwater ecosystems, be...

Moina micrura Kurz, 1875 (Anomopoda: Moinidae) belongs among the most poorly defined cladoceran species in the world. This species has been considered cosmopolitan and is widely used for laboratory experiments, ecotoxicology, physiology or as live food. Nevertheless, recent molecular analyses corroborated the idea that it is a diverse complex of cl...

Background: The zooplanktonic cladocerans Daphnia, present in a wide range of water bodies, are an important component of freshwater ecosystems. In contrast to their high dispersal capacity through diapausing eggs carried by waterfowl, Daphnia often exhibit strong population genetic differentiation. Here, to test for common patterns in the populat...

1. Numerous freshwater crayfish species are known to become successful invaders when introduced to new territories. One of the most invasive species in this group is the red swamp crayfish, Procambarus clarkii (Girard, 1852). In addition to other characteristics facilitating its invasiveness, it is also a vector of crayfish plague, a disease mostly...

Microsporidia (Opisthosporidia, Microsporidia) are frequent parasites of planktonic cladocerans, including Daphnia (Crustacea, Branchiopoda). Analysis of available molecular data (ITS region and partial ssu and lsu rDNA) of these parasites indicates that many microsporidia infecting daphnids have a common ancestor and represent a large clade, which...

The oomycete Aphanomyces astaci is the causative agent of crayfish plague in populations of native European freshwater crayfish. Molecular analyses showed that several distinct genotype groups of this pathogen, apparently associated with different original host taxa, are present in Europe. Tracking their distribution may thus contribute to understa...

Recent studies of the distribution and diversity of freshwater zooplankton have indicated that the previously understudied Eastern Palearctic is an important biogeographic hotspot. Here, we explored the lineage diversity and reproductive modes of the Daphnia pulex species group across China. Members of this group are often keystone species of stand...

Helix lucorum is a large synanthropic land snail of substantial economic importance, which has been recently reported from a number of new sites in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. It is an originally Anatolian and Caucasian species, but its presumed natural distribution also covers the south and east of the Balkans. Populations of unclear ori...

We investigated the systematics and biogeography of the West-Palaearctic water cricket genus Velia Latreille based on a phylogenetic analysis of five molecular markers obtained from 79% of all known taxa of the subgenera Velia (s. str.) and Velia (Plesiovelia) Tamanini. The results revealed a sister group relationship between Velia (Plesiovelia) an...

Knowledge of the mechanisms facilitating the coexistence of closely related competing species is crucial for understanding biodiversity patterns. The concept of convergent agonistic character displacement (ACD) suggests that interspecific interference competition may lead to convergence in territorial signals between species, which helps to establi...

Several species of palaemonid shrimps are known to act as fish-cleaning symbionts, with cleaning interactions ranging from dedicated (obligate) to facultative. We confirmed five evolutionarily independent origins of fish cleaning symbioses within the family Palaemonidae based on a phylogenetic analysis and the ancestral state reconstruction of 68 s...

Biological invasions are not only events with substantial environmental and socioeconomic impacts but are also interesting natural experiments, allowing the study of phenomena such as the cultural evolution of bird song following introduction. We took an excellent opportunity to compare the distribution of dialects of the yellowhammer (Emberiza cit...

Groundwater is an extreme environment due to its absence of light, resource scarcity and highly fragmentary nature. Successful groundwater colonizers underwent major evolutionary changes and exhibit eye and pigment loss (troglomorphies). Consequently, their chances of dispersal and survival in the well-connected surface waters are greatly decreased...

The Holocene postglacial expansions offer a possibility to assess how quickly snails, with proverbially slow active dispersal and unclear passive dispersal capabilities, can naturally spread. We explore the possibilities and limitations of such an approach on an iconic European snail. We locate probable sources of postglacial expansion of Helix pom...

The signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus, native to northwestern North America, has become the most widespread invasive crayfish species in Europe. It has been introduced repeatedly since 1959, and altogether >60,000 individuals were imported. Secondary introductions across the continent followed, resulting in its current presence in ≥26 Europe...