Christian Berg

University of Graz | KFU Graz · Institute of Biology

Background While substantial research has explored rhizosphere and phyllosphere microbiomes, knowledge on flower microbiome, particularly in wild plants remains limited. This study explores into the diversity, abundance, and composition of bacterial and fungal communities on leaves and flowers of wild flowering plants in their natural alpine habita...

The Ecological Indicator Values for Europe (EIVE) 1.0 were released in January 2023 and are the hitherto most comprehensive ecological indicator value (EIV) system for Europe. They comprise the assessment of the five main niche dimensions (moisture, nitrogen, reaction, light, temperature) for almost 15,000 vascular plant taxa. EIVE was constructed...

Wie in den vergangenen Jahren berichten wir an dieser Stelle wieder über besondere Moosfunde aus der Steiermark mit Schwerpunkt auf das Mürztal.

Introduction. In the present study, we tested the variability of spore morphology in freshly collected plants of Riccia bifurca Hoffm., R. glauca L., R. sorocarpa Bisch. and R. warnstorfii Limpr. ex Warnst. at the individual and population scale, and examined the taxonomical power of distinct characters that are used in the literature for species d...

Peatlands, one of the oldest ecosystems, globally store significant amounts of carbon and freshwater. However, they are under severe threat from human activities, leading to changes in water, nutrient and temperature regimes in these delicate systems. Such shifts can trigger a substantial carbon flux into the atmosphere and diminish the water‐holdi...

Aims: We introduce ReSurveyEurope — a new data source of resurveyed vegetation plots in Europe, compiled by a collaborative network of vegetation scientists. We describe the scope of this initiative, provide an overview of currently available data, governance, data contribution rules, and accessibility. In addition, we outline further steps, includ...

Background While substantial research has explored rhizosphere and phyllosphere microbiomes, knowledge on flower microbiome, particularly in wild plants remains limited. This study explores into the diversity, abundance, and composition of bacterial and fungal communities on leaves and flowers of wild flowering plants in their natural alpine habita...

Rhizosphere microbiome assembly is essential for plant health, but the temporal dimension of this process remains unexplored. We used a chronosequence of 150 years of the retreating Hallstätter glacier (Dachstein, Austria) to disentangle this exemplarily for the rhizosphere of three pioneer alpine plants. Time of deglaciation was an important facto...

Ecological indicator values for Austrian vascular plants. Ecological indicator values of plants serve as indirect indicators for the status of ecological parameters in absence of physico-chemical measurements at place. Ellenberg introduced seven parameters which are namely light (L), temperature (T), continentality (K), moisture (F), reaction (R),...

We summarise all known data on the liverwort Mannia triandra (Scop.) Grolle in Montenegro. This species was previously only known from literature. During our fieldwork between 2016 and 2022, we were able to detect it in seven parts of the country at 18 localities. It occurs mainly in the south�western part of the country, at altitudes between 40 an...

Scientific basis for a conservation concept for vascular plants in Styria-To counteract the loss of biodiversity on earth, one of the main concerns of nature conservation is to protect and conserve species in their habitats. In this paper we present a scientific study for an in-situ-conservation of vascular plants in Styria, which can work as a bas...

Background The microbiota of liverworts provides an interesting model for plant symbioses; however, their microbiome assembly is not yet understood. Here, we assessed specific factors that shape microbial communities associated with Riccia temporary agricultural crusts in harvested fields by investigating bacterial, fungal and archaeal communities...

New Bryophyte findings from Styria (Austria)

Urbanisation is one of the major drivers of global species extinction. Botanical gardens, being diverse green oases in urban landscapes, have a high potential as refuge areas for wild species. How many and which organisms use the gardens as secondary habitats has been little studied. Twenty botanical gardens in Germany, Austria and Switzerland part...

The desiccation of the Aral Sea represents one of the largest human-made environmental regional disasters. The salt- and toxin-enriched dried-out basin provides a natural laboratory for studying ecosystem functioning and rhizosphere assembly under extreme anthropogenic conditions. Here, we investigated the prokaryotic rhizosphere communities of the...

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...

Observations of lichenized fungi and bryophytes during the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge 2022: Graz, Graz-Umgebung and Deutschlandsberg.-The citizen scientist event "City Nature Challenge 2022: Graz" yielded 79 lichen species and 221 bryophytes. The five most common lichen species were Xanthoria parietina, Physcia adscendens, Evernia prunastri,...

Summary: Biodiversity in the Biosphere Reserve Carinthian Nockberge. Results from the 6th GEO day of Nature 2021 – “At the foot of the Zunderwand” Seventy-one biodiversity experts participated in the inventory of plant, fungi and animal species from the area beneath the Zunderwand on the 2nd and 3rd of July 2021. The study area is situated in the C...

Aims Arable habitats (i.e. fields, orchards, vineyards, and their fallows) were created by humans and have been essential elements in Central European landscapes for several millennia. In recent decades, these habitats have been drastically altered by changes in land use as well as agricultural practices and, more recently, by climate change. These...

Red list of Austrian vascular plants.

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...

In dieser Serie wird laufend über bemerkenswerte Funde und sonstige wichtige Erkenntnisse und Beobachtungen zur Gefäßpflanzen-Flora der Steiermark berichtet.

Wie in den vergangenen Jahren berichten wir an dieser Stelle wieder über besondere Moosfunde aus der Steiermark. Diesmal liegt der Schwerpunkt bei Moosarten steirischer Tieflagen.

Aim The first comprehensive checklist of European phytosociological alliances, orders and classes (EuroVegChecklist) was published by Mucina et al. (2016, Applied Vegetation Science , 19 (Suppl. 1), 3–264). However, this checklist did not contain detailed information on the distribution of individual vegetation types. Here we provide the first maps...

Naturalness and hemeroby indicator values are specialized species-based indicators used in Continental Europe that reflect plant species’ affinity to degraded habitats. Despite their potential utility for basic and applied science, their similarities have gone unnoticed, and they have yet to be studied together. Here, we combine literature review a...

Introduction The plant microbiota is known to protect its host against invasion by plant pathogens. Recent studies have indicated that the microbiota of indoor plants is transmitted to the local built environment where it might fulfill yet unexplored functions. A better understanding of the interplay of such microbial communities with human pathoge...

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) from iNaturalist is a competitive event between cities and carried out since 2016 - initially only in the USA - with the aim of collecting as much data as possible about the occurrence of species using georeferenced, digital photos or recordings. The gained data should create a better basis for biodiversity studies a...

In Graz (Austria) and Podgorica (Montenegro), epiphytic lichens and bryophytes were studied in 2017 based on a standardized approach. On 165 trees in Graz, 27 bryophyte and 38 lichen species were determined. In Podgorica, on 161 trees, 29 bryophyte and 52 lichen species were found. The mean epiphytic cover in Graz was significantly higher. Mean bry...

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) from iNaturalist is a competitive event between cities and carried out since 2016 - initially only in the USA - with the aim of collecting as much data as possible about the occurrence of species using georeferenced, digital photos or recordings. The gained data should create a better basis for biodiversity studies a...

In cultivation experiments we studied growth behavior on living material of several Riccia-species as a part of the Austrian Riccia-Project. By documenting plant growth from natural habitats and from our living collection by photographs, we could show the known types of propagation (1) fragmentation of the rosettes and (2) apical tubers. In additio...

The occurrence of Riccia warnstorfii in the British Isles are discussed.

Aims : We studied the syntaxonomic position, biodiversity, ecological features, nature conservation value and current status of dry grasslands investigated by Josias Braun-Blanquet more than 60 years ago. Study area : Inner-alpine valleys of Austria. Methods : We sampled 67 plots of 10 m ² , following the standardized EDGG methodology. We subjected...

Background Bogs are unique ecosystems inhabited by distinctive, coevolved assemblages of organisms, which play a global role for carbon storage, climate stability, water quality and biodiversity. To understand ecology and plant–microbe co-occurrence in bogs, we selected 12 representative species of bryophytes and vascular plants and subjected them...

Aim The number of naturalized (i.e. established) alien species has increased rapidly over recent centuries. Given the differences in environmental tolerances among species, little is known about what factors determine the extent to which the observed size of the naturalized range of a species and hence the extent to which the observed richness of n...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are cost-effective, transparent and flexible planning tools to support various areas in nature conservation. Variables taken from remote sensing (RS) are broadly applicable to biodiversity studies. In our study, we combined RS-variables (normalized differenced vegetation index and land surface temperatures), with...

Background Human impact has had a profound influence on modern vegetation. Expert‐based vegetation indicator systems have been developed to measure and characterize human impacts on vegetation. Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a widely used, primarily North American system for assessing degradation and natural quality through species‐based val...

Wie in den vergangenen zwei Jahren berichten wir an dieser Stelle wieder über besondere Moosfunde aus der Steiermark. Nicht weniger als fünf Arten, drei Lebermoose (Calypogeia arguta, Scapania apiculata, S. scapanioides) und zwei Laubmoose (Chionoloma minus, Orthotrichum dentatum) sind neu für das Land. Die Funde stammen aus unterschiedlichen Regio...

This is the first record of the liverwort Riccia atromarginata for the Western Balkans. It was found on conglomerate terraces in the city of Podgorica, Montenegro, at the confluence of the rivers Ribnica and Morača. The material from Montenegro as well as living samples from Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Cyprus served as a basis for a detailed descrip...

Nuphar pumila is a glacial relict, which is nowadays rare throughout Europe and red-listed in most European regions. In Switzerland only three autochthonous populations and one population of the hybrid with N. lutea (N. ×spenneriana) have survived to date, one of them in the canton of Zurich. To protect this species regionally, the canton of Zurich...

Storing seeds in seed banks is an effective way to preserve plant diversity and conserve species. An essential step towards a valuable conservation is the validation of germination. This study presents a germination screening of seeds from 255 species of the European Eastern Alps, which were to be stored at the Millennium Seed Bank (Kew, UK). The f...

Bacteria are essential constituents of bog ecosystems. We report 44 bacterial genomes reconstructed from metagenomes sampled across 12 plant species representing the Alpine bog vegetation. This resource will facilitate further exploration of the bacteria’s genetic potential and allow to refine their ecological roles in association with their plant...

Berg, C. & Pöltl, M. 2020. Spore development during capsule maturation of three Riccia species. – Herzogia 33: 179 –187. Riccia spores develop during sporophyte growing and maturation. In young capsules, the spores have not yet archived their final size, color and ornamentation. These are important features for the determination. We ask, at which s...

This report presents the European Weed Vegetation Database, a new database of vegetation plots documenting short-lived vegetation of arable and ruderal habitats from Europe and Macaronesia. The database comprises the phytosociological classes Papaveretea rhoeadis, Sisymbrietea, Chenopodietea and Digitario sanguinalis-Era-grostietea minoris. It is a...

Bericht über das BLAM-Jahrestreffen 2019 im Lungau (Salzburg, Österreich) und im Rahmen der Exkursionen getätigte bemerkenswerte Moosfunde.

We have tested various agents commonly used in microscopy for bleaching dark microscopic objects , using Riccia spores. Many Riccia species have very dark spores and therefore do not allow a clear view of all spore characteristics, like the wall, which is important for the determination. We have tested sodium hypochlorite, hydrogen peroxide and chl...

The 11 th EDGG Field Workshop was conducted from 6 to 13 July 2018 in Austria. Its aim was to revisit dry grasslands in the inneralpine dry valleys of Austria that were investigated in the late 1950s by Braun-Blanquet and to collect high-quality biodiversity data from these. We conducted our sampling in the Styrian Mur Valley, the Virgen Valley in...

Most plant communities consist of different structural and ecological subsets, ranging from cryptogams to different tree layers. The completeness and approach with which these subsets are sampled have implications for vegetation classification. Non-vascular plants are often omitted or sometimes treated separately, referring to their assemblages as...

Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database,...

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). Following a previous Long Database Report (Dengler et al. 2018, Phytocoenologia 48, 331–347), we provide here the first update on content and functionality of Gra...

Ergänzend zu der Serie „Bemerkenswertes zur Flora der Steiermark“ wird hier nun bereits zum zweiten Mal über bemerkenswerte Moosfunde aus der Steiermark berichtet (vgl. Pöltl & al. 2018). Auch diesmal liegt der Schwerpunkt bei Moosarten der collinen bis montanen Höhenlage. Eine Großzahl der Funde wurde im Rahmen des erstmalig stattfindenden, steiri...

Summary: Vegetation studies at Mount Angerkogel (Totes Gebirge). The 2114m high Mount Angerkogel in the eastern part of the "Totes Gebirge" was examined regarding its floristic structure and its endemic vascular plants with 250 vegetation plots. In its tree-free and wind-exposed altitudinal belt on the western and northern slopes Mount Angerkogel i...

At the European level, the Natura 2000 habitat network is the main instrument for preserving and protecting species and habitats. However, protected areas are fixed in location, and environmental conditions continually subject to change. Changing conditions force species to shift their geographic distribution or to adapt to new conditions, ultimate...

Background: The plant microbiota is crucial for plant health and growth. Recently, vertical transmission of a beneficial core microbiota was identified for crop seeds, but for native plants, complementary mechanisms are almost completely unknown. Methods: We studied the seeds of eight native plant species growing together for centuries under the...

Abstract This paper investigates the neophytic woody vegetation in the city of Graz. For this purpose, such vegetation types were located and 129 phytosociological relevés were performed in the study area. The data were sorted by floristic similarity into five units: mesophilous beech forests, oak-hornbeam woodlands, thermophilous beech forests, mo...

A guide to recognizing and collecting bryophytes in European grassland. Fritschiana 92: 57-64.

Questions: Vegetation-plot records provide information on presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers, and thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database,...

Sixteen species of cockroaches have been reported for Austria so far. This study is the first record of the parthenogenetic Surinam cockroach, Pycnoscelus surinamensis (L.) for Austria (and thus Central Europe). The species is natively distributed in Indo‐Malaysia but has been unintentionally introduced in many, mainly tropical, countries throughou...

During floristic research of acidic bogs, calcareous fens and seasonally flooded (periodically inundated) grassy places in beech forests in Semolj region, Eleocharis carniolica W. D. J. Koch was found, which was the first record of that species in vascular plant flora of Montenegro. In surrounding countries, this species was recorded in Bosnia and...