Alena Suchackova Bartonova

Czech Academy of Sciences, Biology Centre · Institute of Entomology

With ongoing insect declines, species expanding in distribution and abundance deserve attention, as understanding their success may help design conservation strategies for less successful species. Common causes of these successes include warmer climates, novel resources, and exploiting land use change, including land abandonment. These factors affe...

Aim The distribution of within-species lineages has been affected by Quaternary climate changes, and population differentiation has been influenced by species life histories. We investigated whether the distribution of individual mitochondrial genetic lineages reflects the constituent species’ traits. Using the functionally diverse group of butterf...

Aim The distribution of within-species lineages has been affected by Quaternary climate changes, and population differentiation has been influenced by species life history traits. We investigated whether the distribution of individual mitochondrial genetic lineages reflects the constituent species' traits. Using the functionally diverse group of b...

The Asian or yellow-legged hornet Vespa velutina nigrithorax has been accidentally introduced into several European countries. This invasive species has an impact on entomofauna, mainly apiculture, and plant biodiversity through reduction of pollinators. We present the first record of the species in the Czech Republic, notes associated with this re...

1. Genomic data are not yet widely used in insect conservation practice. Here, with a focus on butterflies, we aim to identify the strengths, limitations and remaining gaps between the fields of population genomics and insect conservation management. Based on a literature search complemented with expert opinion, we discuss avenues for translating r...

Metodika spojuje aktuální poznatky o rozšíření, ekologii, stanovištních nárocích a ochraně tří druhů fauny ČR vázaných na suché trávníky chráněných evropskou legislativou s klimatickými modely jejich rozšíření a projekcemi těchto modelů pro budoucí scénáře klimatické změny. Ze syntézy těchto informací pak navrhujeme další postup při jejich ochraně....

[in Czech] Středoevropské stepi jsou kriticky ohroženým biotopem, jehož kontinuitu provázejí spory. Vhled do historie může poskytnout genetika a klimatické modelování. Okáč skalní (Chazara briseis), modrásek ligrusový (Polyommatus damon) a m. komonicový (P. dorylas) jsou stepní druhy motýlů vymírající v celé střední Evropě. První dva druhy mohly bý...

Alpine grasslands above the treeline are severely threatened by climate change, mainly due to forest expansion driven by warmer conditions. Analogous lowland grasslands experience severe reductions due to land‐use abandonment and forest encroachment. To address how climate change impacted open‐areas insects, we used Parnassius apollo as a model, a...

Jesters, butterflies of the genus Symbrenthia Hübner, 1819, comprise 14 species mainly distributed in the Oriental region. Although this genus has attracted the attention of many researchers in the past, its taxonomy and biogeographic history remain unclear. In this study, we investigate phylogenetic and biogeographic relationships based on one mit...

Analogous lowland grasslands experience severe reductions due to land-use abandonment and forest encroachment. To address how climate change impacted open-areas insects, we modelled upper Pleistocene range changes of a butterfly with wide Palearctic distribution inhabiting both alpine and low-altitude steppe grasslands, Parnassius apollo. We covere...

Earth’s biodiversity is still so poorly known that only about two million (Bánki et al., 2021) of the estimated nine million or more eukaryotic species (Larsen et al., 2017; Mora et al., 2011) have been described. This puts taxonomists in a race against time to discover biodiversity before it is lost as a result of the Anthropocene mass extinction....

Roughly 18,000 species are described annually as new to science, while estimated extinction rates are comparable to or even exceeding these new discoveries. Considering the estimates of up to 15 million extant eukaryotic species on Earth, of which only about 2 million have been described so far, there has been a recent 'boom' of new potential appro...

The cold hardiness of overwintering stages affects the distribution of temperate and cold-zone insects. Studies on Erebia, a species-rich cold-zone butterfly genus, detected unexpected diversity of cold hardiness traits. We expanded our investigation to eight Satyrinae species of seven genera. We assessed Autumn and Winter supercooling points (SCPs...

In the alpine ecosystems across mountainous ranges, open areas are threatened by forest expansion, whether it is caused by natural succession or afforestation by human activities. During the last century, the abandonment of the grazing land and the banning of grazing by cattle in some areas, brought many pastures to become shrubby. Thus, reducing t...

We retrieved shapes of elevational species richness gradients (unimodal, decreasing, increasing) from 64 publications, studying Himalayan elevation patterns. We covered both plants and animals, and tested the hypothesis that unimodal gradients, explicable by the geometric mid-domain effect, prevail in the mountains, whereas decreasing or increasing...

Central European dry grasslands represent extrazonal patches of the Eurasian steppe biome. They suffer from severe habitat alterations due to land-use changes, abandonment, or inappropriate management. The butterflies Chazara briseis (Linnaeus, 1764) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae), Polyommatus damon (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenid...

Aim Biogeographical studies on the entire ranges of widely distributed species can change our perception of species’ range dynamics. We studied the effects of Pleistocene glacial cycles on current butterfly species distributions, aiming to uncover complex biogeographic patterns in the Holarctic, a region dramatically affected by Cenozoic climate ch...

Modrásek pumpavový (Aricia artaxerxes) je eurasijský motýl s boreomontánním rozšířením. Ve střední Evropě osídluje podhorské trávníky, které jsou opomíjeným biotopem. V České republice je v současnosti znám pouze z Českokrumlovska, což jsme potvrdili sekvenováním DNA. Všichni ostatní podezřelí jedinci patřili k jeho hojnějšímu příbuznému druhu – mo...

The bacterium Wolbachia infects many insect species and spreads by diverse vertical and horizontal means. As co-inherited organisms, these bacteria often cause problems in mitochondrial phylogeny inference. The phylogenetic relationships of many closely related Palaearctic blue butterflies (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae: Polyommatinae) are ambiguous. We...

Palaearctic steppes evolved under the Cenozoic cold arid climate and megaherbivore pressure. A large portion of the biome persisted into the Holocene but has recently been subjected to human land use alternation. Pseudophilotes bavius (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) is a steppe specialist sporadically distributed in Eastern Europe and Pontic-Caspian regi...

https://vesmir.cz/cz/casopis/archiv-casopisu/2020/cislo-3/velci-bylozravci-zmeny-klimatu-i.html

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The use of functional information in the form of species traits plays an important role in explaining biodiversity patterns and responses to environmental changes. Although relationships between species composition, their traits, and the environment have been extensively studied on a case-by-case basis, results are variable, and it remains unclear...

Cotesia gades (Nixon, 1974). Bohemia mer., Stará Hlína, Výtopa Rožmberka Nature Reserve (6954b), 49°3′5.894″ N 14°47′39.197″ E, 425 m a.s.l., 27.vii.2018, 9 ♂♂ 86 ♀♀, body length 3.2 mm, reared from caterpillar of Stauropus fagi (Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae) collected from a grass stem on a mesophilic fishpond bank covered with semi-...

We report here the first molecular evidence for the occurrence of Aricia artaxerxes (Fabricius, 1793) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) in the Czech Republic. In Central Europe, this species may co-occur with its more common sibling, Aricia agestis (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775). We sequenced the cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 of darkly-coloured, putative...

In connection with the broad refaunation/rewilding movement, free-range grazing by native ungulates is being increasingly used as a management option for diverse habitat types, including xeric grasslands of temperate Europe. Prior to the establishment of such grazing by Exmoor ponies, an analogue of the wild horse for European grasslands, we survey...

Pleistocene glaciations had significant effects on the distribution and evolution of species inhabiting the Holarctic region. Phylogeographic studies concerning the entire region are still rare. Here, we compared global phylogeographic patterns of one boreo-montane and one boreo-temperate butterflies with largely overlapping distribution ranges acr...

Overview of samples of both Boloria eunomia and Boloria selene. Specimens localities; coordinates; COI, ArgKin and Wingless haplotypes, SAMOVA groups and GenBank accession numbers. (XLSX)

MaxEnt. Comparisons of (A) Regularization Multiplier (RM) parameter and (B) different feature classes (FC) of MaxEnt models by ENMeval R package using AICc, used for calculations of Spatial Distribution Models of Boloria eunomia and Boloria selene. The lowest AICc values indicate the best models. (C) Relative gain of the MaxEnt model after removing...

Graphs from SAMOVA analyses. Boloria eunomia cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI; 11 populations) (A); and arginine kinase gene (ArgKin; 3 populations) (B); Boloria selene cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI; 6 populations) (C). K, number of clusters; ΦCT, fixation index. (TIF)

Detailed maps of haplotype diversity of Boloria eunomia within Europe based on COI. Two lineages occurring in the Alps and the Czech Republic (A). Haplotype diversity in north-eastern Europe showing the contact zones in Scandinavia and Poland (B). (TIF)

Okáč Proterebia afra (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) je druhem asijských stepí s reliktním rozšířením na Balkáně: v chorvatské Dalmácii a řeckém pohoří Askion. Je tam hojný, ale čelí hrozbě zarůstání biotopů. Druh žil od pozdních třetihor v horách severního Íránu a na Zakavkazsku, odkud se rozšířil do zbytku svého areálu. V ruských a kazašských stepích...

Despite high representation of steppe elements in Northern Palaearctic temperate biota, the Pleistocene history of such species is still insufficiently understood. The steppe specialist butterfly Proterebia afra (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) inhabits both the continental Palaearctic steppe biome and southern mountain steppes; it occurs as a...

Analysing faunal changes using life‐history traits ( LHT ) represents a promising venue in community ecology. We prepared traits table for 1234 species of Central European macro‐moths (Lepidoptera), a species‐rich insect group rather neglected by LHT analyses. Table of 27 LHT s, split into 44 trait states, was subjected to ordination analyses, aimi...

The charismatic and regionally declining Parnassius mnemosyne (Linnaeus, 1758) is notable for surpluses of males in mark-recapture studies, as well as for poor detectability of its larvae, which develop on spring ephemeral plants, Corydalis spp. In order to study whether the bias towards male exists already in larval stage, we searched for the larv...

A characteristic butterfly of Asian steppes, Proterebia afra (Fabricius 1787), was studied in its two relic areas of occurrence within the Balkans—the Askion Mts (a single mountain massif in NW Greece) and Dalmatia (karstic inland S Croatia)—together with co-occurring butterfly communities during its early spring adult flight period. P. afra adults...

Melitaea palamedes Groum-Grshimaïlo, 1890 is treated here as a subspecies of M. minerva Staudinger, 1881, based on molecular data and morphology: Melitaea minerva palamedes Groum-Grshimaïlo, 1890, stat. rev. © 2017, Sociedad Hispano-Luso-Americana de Lepidopterología. All rights reserved.

Metodika zahrnuje všechny přírodní biotopy v České republice a věnuje se péči o ohrožené zástupce jak nočních, tak denních motýlů. Naopak všechny předchozí studie se omezovaly jen na stanoviště lesní nebo nelesní, případně motýly denní nebo noční. Vedle důkladné znalosti relevantní literatury používá Metodika údaje o početnosti, stanovištní vazbě a...

Koramius charltonius (Gray, 1853) (Lepidoptera: Papilionidae) is distributed in the mountains of Central Asia. We analysed genetic and phylogeographic patterns throughout the western part of its range using a mitochondrial marker (COI). We also analysed the wing pattern using multivariate statistics. We found that the species contains several uniqu...

In the present paper, we explore the evolution of cluster structure in closely related species in the Euphydryas aurinia complex based on morphological (wing pattern, genital armatures) and molecular (cytochrome c oxidase subunit I) characters. Male genitalia differ in the length and shape of the uncus, harpe and juxta branches, by the shape of som...

The biodiversity of the Southern Balkans, part of the Mediterranean global biodiversity hot-spot, is threatened by land use intensification and abandonment, the latter causing forest encroachment of formerly open habitats. We investigated the impact of forest encroachment on butterfly species richness, community species composition and the represen...

Checklist of butterfly species recorded in individual regions and total numbers of records (+/–indicate presence/absence). (DOCX)

List of butterfly species life-history traits used to analyse impacts of forest encroachment on South Balkans butterflies, associated hypotheses and relevant references. (DOCX)

List of life history traits, used to analyse impacts of forest encroachment on South Balkans butterflies. (DOCX)

Detailed description of study regions, south Balkans, 2013–2014. (DOCX)

Description of the direct ordination used to extract vegetation variables from species composition of the sites. (DOCX)

Unconstrained analysis of butterfly species life history traits. (DOCX)

Raw data used for analysing butterfly species richness and community composition. (XLSX)

Reference list to the sources of phylogenetic information. (DOCX)

We used butterfly species lists available for a set of 125 Czech Republic National Nature Reserves and Monuments, the highest small-sized conservation category in the country encompassing practically all biotope types existing in Central Europe, to test the validity of generally agreed “reserve design rules” using multivariate ordination analyses....

Analyzing life history traits of butterfly communities and faunas frequently reveals a generalist-specialist continuum as the main gradient, where species using wide arrays of resources, with good dispersal ability and fast development are distinguished from those using specialised resources, having limited dispersal ability and developing slowly....