Angelika Schwabe

Technical University of Darmstadt | TU · Workgroup for Vegetation Ecology and Restoration Ecology

Since the year 2000 we studied in the nature reserve ‘Griesheimer Düne und Eichwäldchen‘ (southern Hesse) in sites of steppe-like sandy grassland (Allio-Stipetum capillatae and corresponding stages with shrubs) permanent plots on nutrient-poor sand. On the one hand the newly erected plots had been grazed since this year by sheep (ad ditionally to a...

Since 2019 the ‘Floristisch-soziologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft’ (FlorSoz) has annually nominated the ‘plant community of the year’, to draw attention to Germany’s endangered plant communities in need of protection. This campaign specifically aims at supporting the conservation of plant communities and their habitats as well as at promoting political...

The aim of this study was to analyse the intra-island distribution pattern, the habitat preferences, and the flower-visiting behaviour of the wild bee species of Madeira Island. The total dataset from Madeira Island includes 2,226 data from 491 localities (1,029 with flower visits on 112 plant taxa belonging to 39 plant families). We sampled a tota...

Vegetation-plot resurvey data are a main source of information on terrestrial biodiversity change, with records reaching back more than one century. although more and more data from re-sampled plots have been published, there is not yet a comprehensive open-access dataset available for analysis. Here, we compiled and harmonised vegetation-plot resu...

Long-term analyses of biodiversity data highlight a ‘biodiversity conservation paradox’: biological communities show substantial species turnover over the past century1,2, but changes in species richness are marginal1,3–5. Most studies, however, have focused only on the incidence of species, and have not considered changes in local abundance. Here...

Hochmontane Borstgrasrasen (Leontodonto-Nardetum) im Schwarzwald: Entstehung, Bewirtschaftung und Veränderungen der floristischen Struktur in den letzten 40 Jahren Mat grassland of the upper montane level (Leontodonto-Nardetum) in the Black Forest: origin, management and changes of the floristic structure in the last 40 years The Leontodonto pyr...

Vegetation-plot resurvey data are a main source of information on terrestrial biodiversity change, with records reaching back more than one century. Although more and more data from re-sampled plots have been published, there is not yet a comprehensive open-access dataset available for analysis. Here, we compiled and harmonised vegetation-plot resu...

Base-rich open sandy habitats in the Upper Rhine area of Hesse are wellknown for their highly endangered plant and animal species and vegetation types. Only remnants still exist of habitats that were once widely distributed, prompting initation of nature conservation projects involving installation of stepping stones and corridors to reconnect frag...

Oceanic islands have long been considered engines of differentiation and speciation for terrestrial organisms. Here we investigated colonisation and radiation processes in the Madeira Archipelago and the Canary Islands of the Andrena wollastoni group of bees (subgenus Micrandrena ), which comprises six endemic species and five endemic subspecies on...

Arable vegetation of calcareous soils, the plant community alliance known as Caucalidion, has been newly elected “Plant community of the Year 2022”. In this review article, we provide an overview of the Caucalidion in Germany, its species composition, life cycle and biodiversity, distribution, habitat and phytosociological variation, its history, r...

Mat-grass swards (Festuco-Genistelletum sagittalis) of the montane level in the southern Black Forest: Changes of an endangered plant community in the last 40 years Summary We investigated stands of the Festuco-Genistelletum sagittalis in the Black Forest. We were able to compare 60 phytosociological relevés with an average size of 21 m2 for two ti...

Zu den besonders gefährdeten Pflanzengesellschaften Deutschlands zählen Hartholz-Auenwälder (Ficario-Ulmetum, Syn.: Querco-Ulmetum), weshalb diese von der Floristisch-soziologischen Arbeits-gemeinschaft als "Pflanzengesellschaft des Jahres 2021" ausgewählt wurden. Hartholz-Auenwälder sind Laubwald-Ökosysteme der planaren und kollinen Stufe und beze...

In a taxonomical study, the taxa of the Andrena wollastoni group (Madeira Archipelago, Canary Islands) were newly revised (KRATOCHWIL 2020). In the frame of the fieldwork for this taxonomical publication, we also enlarged the knowledge of the flower-visiting behaviour and the habitats of these wild-bee taxa on the Canary Islands. They inhabit Gran...

Species-rich inland sandy grasslands in central Europe are of high nature conservation value and highly endangered. Livestock grazing is thought to be beneficial for maintaining their value, but data on its long-term effects are scarce. Intense stress factors (drought events, rabbit overpopulation) occur episodically and may interact with the grazi...

As for the first time in 2019 the ‘Floristisch-soziologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (FlorSoz)’ introduces the ‘Plant Community of the Year 2020’ for Germany. The FlorSoz proposal aims to alert the public that the conservation of endangered plant communities and their biodiversity is essential. For the year 2020 the plant community of mat-grass swards...

The aim of this study was to analyse wild bee-plant interactions in Madeira Island and construct a network structure covering the largest parts of the island and most altitudes and habitat types. The interaction data were sampled at 179 localities from 1989 to 2012 mainly by the authors; additionally, data from the collections of the Laboratório Ag...

Porto Santo (Madeira Archipelago) is a relatively old (11.1 to 14.3 Ma) and small volcanic island in the Atlantic Ocean. The main part of the island is characterised by semiarid climate and xeric vegetation, while the higher altitudes show subhumid conditions. So far, 11 butterfly species (Papilionoidea) have been detected on Porto Santo. The occur...

Porto Santo (Madeira Archipelago) is a relatively old (11.1-14.3 Ma) and small volcanic island in the Atlantic Ocean. Due to the low altitudes of the mountains, the main part of the island is characterised by a semiarid climate and xeric vegetation; only a small part shows subhumid conditions. We were able to study the wild-bee fauna and the bee-pl...

Herbivores alter plant biodiversity (species richness) in many of the world’s ecosystems, but the magnitude and the direction of herbivore effects on biodiversity vary widely within and among ecosystems. One current theory predicts that herbivores enhance plant biodiversity at high productivity but have the opposite effect at low productivity. Yet,...

The Atlantic island groups of Macaronesia are an ideal model for the demonstration of colonisation processes by wild bees and are therefore an excellent example for questions of island biogeography. Azores, Madeira, canary and Selvagens Islands, as well as cape verde, have had diflerent geological histories and show strong modifications of the clim...

Um Themen des Schutzes von Pflanzengemeinschaften wirksamer in der breiten Öffentlichkeit zu kommunizieren wird der Vorstand der "Floristisch-Soziologischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft (FlorSoz)" ab 2019 eine "Pflanzengesellschaft des Jahres" ausrufen. Damit sollen politische und administrative Ent-scheidungs-und Umsetzungsprozesse zur Erhaltung der Vielfa...

Impacts of climate change on individual species are increasingly well documented, but we lack understanding of how these effects propagate through ecological communities. Here we combine species distribution models with ecological network analyses to test potential impacts of climate change on 4700 plant and animal species in pollination and seeddi...

Supplementary Figures and Supplementary Tables

Network metrics, climatic niche breadth and climatic suitability change. For 295 plant and 414 animal species, we provide information on plant and animal taxonomy (class, order, family), the effective number of interaction partners, complementary specialization d' (uniqueness of interaction partners relative to other species [range 0-1]), range siz...

Metadata of 13 mutualistic networks. Given are network type, geographic location, habitat type, sampling duration and the number of visitation events, plant and animal species in each network. We only included species in the networks for which occurrence data were available and provide the number of excluded plant and animal species for the study t...

Inland sand vegetation, in our case steppic sandy grassland on base-rich soils, is highly endangered in Europe and therefore in the focus of restoration ecology. While there are studies which deal with short-term restoration success, results for an extended time are rare. We were able to analyse the success of a three-step restoration measure for 1...

In the last about 10 years we developed methods to restore the highly threatened steppic sandy vegetation complexes in the northern upper Rhine valley. The status quo at the end of the 20 th century was that remnants of these vegetation types were scattered and fragmented. Main factors causing the destruction of large areas of steppic sandy vegetat...

Forest preserves (‘Bannwälder’) within Baden-Württemberg are protected areas without direct human influence. Hunting is solely allowed to ensure substantially reduced impact of game animals. Our study area (‘Bannwald Flüh’; 50.4 ha; 513-740 m a.s.l.) is situated in the lower montane belt of the Southern Black Forest near Schönau/Wiesetal. It was es...

In Central Europe stands of the Koelerion glaucae vegetation complex are threatened and mostly highly fragmented. Knowledge about the impact of abiotic and biotic measures to restore this vegetation complex is crucial. Therefore, an inland sand dune complex (around 2 ha) was created in 2009 as a study model in the Upper Rhine Valley (Germany), whic...

Freund et al.: Restoration of a newly created inland-dune complex In Central Europe stands of the Koelerion glaucae vegetation complex are threatened and mostly highly fragmented. Knowledge about the impact of abiotic and biotic measures to restore this vegeta-tion complex is crucial. Therefore, an inland sand dune complex (around 2 ha) was create...

We studied community structures of mainly threatened types of sandy dry grassland, and those of flower-visiting wild bees, in successional, non-ruderal or ruderal gradients in the Upper Rhine Valley (Germany). We searched for congruent characteristics in the floristic/faunistic structure of plant and bee species, and for differences between two stu...

Andrena (Suandrena) portosanctana COCKERELL, 1922, endemic to Porto Santo, Madeira Archipelago, Portugal, was described by Cockerell on the basis of three females collected in the year 1921. No further specimens were found until the year 2011, when two females of this species (collecting date 1995) were detected in a German private collection. In t...

Questions Does epizoochorous dispersal via sheep lead to the establishment of populations of sandy grassland species on newly created, managed restoration sites on sandy bare soil? Do epizoochorously‐induced spatial patterns persist during vegetation development? Does sandy grassland develop, which is rich in epizoochorously‐dispersed target specie...

To examine the necessity of livestock grazing for managing threatened sand vegetation so as to en-sure and develop its nature-conservation value, we investigated a grazing system in a model nature reserve (German upper Rhine valley) characterized by threatened steppic sandy grassland (Allio-Stipetum vegetation complex: Habitats Directive Annex I, p...

Questions Does nutrient addition to nutrient‐poor pioneer grassland lead to altered successional pathways after a lag phase? Are there shifts in plant functional types with time after nutrient addition? Is phytodiversity negatively affected by a 9‐yr nutrient addition? Is succession affected by local seed availability? Location Upper Rhine valley,...

For many years scientists have become fascinated by dry inner alpine vegetation sites, giving detailed descriptions of these types with reference to different scale levels. This fascination is partly based on the high level of species richness and, above all, on the occurrence of rare species and those with disjunct distribution. Our survey will st...

Vegetation survey is an important research agenda in vegetation science. It defines vegetation types and helps understand differences among them, which is essential for both basic ecological research and applications in biodiversity conservation and environmental monitoring. In this editorial, we reflect on the historical development and current st...

In sandy grassland vegetation of Central Europe, extensive grazing is often a management tool to maintain and improve nature conservation value. As part of a long-term field experiment lasting 10 years we investigated the effects of sheep grazing as a type of moderate disturbance. As “experiments by nature” happened in this time period we were also...

Sheep grazing is an important management tool in threatened sandy grassland of the temperate zone. Besides direct grazing effects, previous studies have shown benefits of seed dispersal, but little is known about post-dispersal processes. We studied the role of sheep trampling for the post-dispersal fate of seeds embedded in sheep and rabbit dung a...

Altogether 205 relevés of running-water vegetation complexes throughout the Black Forest were analysed by multivariate methods. For this dataset a conventional phytosociological classification already existed. DCA (Detrended Correspondence Analysis) shows a clear differentiation of the intensity of human impact as well as the separation of running-...

We studied whether target species of the Cirsio tuberosi-Molinietum can establish themselves after restoration measurements in former riverbed sites of the Neckar (administration district Darmstadt- Dieburg, Hesse). These wetland sites (partly former fens) had been drained with subsequent mineraliza- tion of peat. We ran topsoil removal experiments...

We studied whether target species of the Cirsio tuberosi-Molinietum can establish themselves after restoration measurements in former riverbed sites of the Neckar (administration district Darmstadt-Dieburg, Hesse). These wetland sites (partly former fens) had been drained with subsequent mineralization of peat. We ran topsoil removal experiments to...

In this section basic questions and topics of the project are considered, regarding the background and the results of the T+D project. The cited numbers of Chapters refer to this volume. It was a special aim of this project to examine also the functionality of livestock hus-bandry in areas of "Ried und Sand", although in the case of threatened area...

Open base-rich sandy habitats are often characterised by an extensive cover of biological soil crusts (BSCs). We studied the impact of mechanical disturbances on cyanobacteria/algae-dominated BSCs, macro-cryptogams (bryophytes, lichens), phanerogams and their regeneration processes in a 3-year field experiment in a temperate region. We compared con...

Sheep epizoochory has often been proposed as an important vector which can help to overcome the dispersal limitation of plants in fragmented landscapes. In order to evaluate the contribution of herbivores to recruitment especially of target species, the dispersal and post-dispersal fate of such seeds must be known. In a field experiment sheep with...

Question: Is it possible to restore dry calcareous inland sand ecosystems with their characteristic plant community structure within a 4-yr period by means of combined abiotic–biotic techniques (topsoil replacement, inoculation with raked/mown plant material from target areas)? Location: Upper Rhine valley, Germany. Methods: Two 4-year experiments...

To elucidate the impact of biological soil crusts (BSCs) on the establishment of habitat-typical vascular plant species, we studied the effects of seed location (surface versus sub-surface), age of crusts (initial versus stable), long rainy periods (continuous versus discontinuous watering) and microenvironment (cracks versus no cracks). In additio...

We analysed the interaction web of a plant-bee pollinator community (Hymenoptera: Apidae, honeybees excluded) for two years. Based on the ordination of the incidence matrix, both webs showed coherence and clumping but no species turnover. While this may indicate a moderate set of nested subsets and sub-communities, further analysis of nestedness di...

Das Vorkommen von Sandökosystemen im Binnenland (Flugsand- und Decksandfelder, Dünen) ist vor allem an Sand-Akkumulationen der vorletzten Eiszeit (in Nordeuropa: Saaleeiszeit und Sand-Ablagerungen an größeren Flüssen gebunden. So finden wir die Verbreitungsschwerpunkte von binnenländischen Sandökosystemen in Mitteleuropa einerseits vor allem im Ber...

In temperate regions, biological soil crusts (BSCs: complex communities of cyanobacteria, eukaryotic algae, bryophytes, and lichens) are not well investigated regarding community structure and diversity. Furthermore, studies on succession are rare. For that reason, the community assembly of crusts representing two successional stages (initial, 5 ye...

Das Vorkommen von Sandökosystemen im Binnenland (Flugsand- und Decksandfelder, Dünen) ist vor allem an Sand-Akkumulationen der vorletzten Eiszeit (in Nordeuropa: Saaleeiszeit und Sand-Ablagerungen an größeren Flüssen gebunden. So finden wir die Verbreitungsschwerpunkte von binnenländischen Sandökosystemen in Mitteleuropa einerseits vor allem im Ber...

Resource utilisation and foraging ranges of Apidae (excluding Apis and Bombus) were studied in sandy grasslands of the temperate zone by pollen analysis combined with direct observation of bees. Plant-taxa composition of 558 pollen loads collected from 56 bee species was determined. We recorded flower-visits using plot-based observations and resour...

The contribution of large-herbivore epizoochory to the transfer of seeds within and between areas is thought to be significant. But often seeds of ubiquitous species are dispersed, which may enhance ruderalization processes. In order to study the dispersal of target species by sheep, we employed a community-based grazing approach followed by intra-...

Question: What relationship exists between productivity, plant species richness and livestock diet? Are the results dependent on scale? Location: A sheep-grazed Koelerio-Corynephoretea sandy habitat of the northern upper Rhine (Germany) as a low productivity model system. Methods: The investigation was carried out for three years at a fine scale (2...

We tested the new Ellenberg–Pignatti indicator values in Festucetalia valesiacae communities of three valley regions (southern inner Alps: Valle d’Aosta, Valtellina, Valle Venosta/Vinschgau). In these landscape types gradients of all value types exist: light (L), temperature (T), moisture (F/M), nitrogen (N), continentality (C) and soil reaction (R...

The abandonment of former land-use often leads to an increasing grass encroachment and a related decrease in plant species richness. Extensive grazing can be an adequate management method, but the effects on the vegetation depend on the livestock species. We investigated two different subtypes of the Armerio-Festucetum trachyphyllae Hohenester 1960...

This study examines the seedling emergence and fruiting success of plant species endozoochorously dispersed by sheep in a field experiment in a Koelerion glaucae area. We designed a factorial experiment (faeces/soil disturbance/successional stage/year) that mimics sheep-mediated microsites and analysed all occurring vascular plant species from Sept...

Faust, C.; Storm, C.; Schwabe, A.: Impact of rabbit grazing in Armerio-Festucetum trachyphyllae vegetation: flower phenology, extraction of phytomass and diet preferences. – Hercynia N.F. 40 (2007): 177-192. Optimized nature conservation and management strategies are necessary to preserve Armerio-Festuce-tum trachyphyllae vegetation, which is also...