Erwin Bergmeier

Erwin Bergmeier
University of Göttingen | GAUG · Department of Vegetation and Phytodiversity Analysis

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340
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Publications

Publications (340)
Article
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One of the most endangered plant communities in Germany, and one that is on the verge of extinction, is the lichen pine forest (Cladino-Pinetum sylvestris, syn. Cladonio-Pinetum sylvestris). For this reason, it has been selected by the Floristisch-soziologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft as the “Plant Community of the Year 2025”. Lichen pine forests are u...
Article
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Plant communities are composed of species that differ both in functional traits and evolutionary histories. As species’ functional traits partly result from their individual evolutionary history, we expect the functional diversity of communities to increase with increasing phylogenetic diversity. This expectation has only been tested at local scale...
Article
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After a nomenclatural revision of the available names for the order of rocky grasslands of the Balkan Peninsula within the class Festuco-Brometea, based on Article 52 ICPN we propose the conservation of the name Koelerietalia splendentis against the name Halacsyetalia sendtneri. In syntaxonomic concepts not combining the limestone and serpentine ro...
Article
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Zusammenfassung Sabulina tenuifolia subsp. tenuifolia (Minuartia hybrida subsp. tenuifolia), die Echte Zartmiere oder Schmalblättrige Miere, ist 2023 in Südost-Niedersachsen (Nörten-Hardenberg) wiedergefunden worden. Die Art war seit etwa 40 Jahren als für die Flora Niedersachsens verloren gehalten worden. Der Bestand ist auf eine kleine Fläche be...
Article
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Aims: Developing a hierarchical classification system for classes, orders and alliances of the diverse dry grasslands of the Central and Eastern Balkan Peninsula and translating this into an electronic expert system (ES) for the automatic assignment of plots. Location: Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and northern Greece. Methods: We extra...
Article
In the arid landscapes of South Morocco's Saharan fringe, traditional agroecosystems stand out for their rich diversity of segetal vegetation. This study examines the segetal flora of these unique agroecosystems, investigating their richness, community characteristics and composition. We collected 155 relevés in fields located in the Guelmim provin...
Article
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The Romuleion , the only alliance of the order Poetalia bulbosae (class Poetea bulbosae ) found on the Balkan Peninsula, represents Mediterranean perennial and ephemeral pastures. It has been found in several Balkan countries, from Greece to the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bulgaria. However, a revision of its nomenclature a...
Article
Bergmeier, E., Eckstein, J. & Kray, R. 2023. New and noteworthy bryophyte records in Greek mountain wetlands and at woodland ecotones with notes on the phytosociological affiliation.-Herzogia 36: 268-278. The diversity and abundance of bryophytes in the vegetation of wetlands is significant but the habitats are understudied in the Greek mountains....
Article
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Wet grasslands and fens are critically threatened habitats, firstly by abandonment or environmentally inappropriate farming, then possibly as a result of climate change by drying out in periods of lasting drought. To provide comprehensive information on the present species composition, ecology and conservation status of these biodiverse habitats an...
Article
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Hartmut Dierschke, langjähriger Schriftleiter dieser Zeitschrift Tuexenia und Ehren-vorsitzender der herausgebenden Floristisch-soziologischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft, ist am 19. Dezember 2022 nach kurzer Krankheit in Göttingen verstorben. Mit diesem Nachruf möchten wir, Kollegen sowie die meisten von uns Autoren ehemalige Studierende von Hartmut, die...
Article
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Questions: Dryland annual plant communities constitute the most species‐rich small‐scale vegetation in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, the composition and diversity of these units and the factors controlling their variation are still insufficiently understood. Therefore, we investigated species composition and richness patterns in relation to imp...
Article
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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...
Poster
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High Nature Value (HNV) farming emerged in the early 1990s as a response to the urgent need to conserve European biodiversity, specifically by preserving traditional low-intensity farming systems. This concept highlights the crucial link between extensive farming practices, the utilization of semi-natural land, and the conservation of high biodiver...
Article
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Aim Theoretical, experimental and observational studies have shown that biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are influenced by functional community structure through two mutually non‐exclusive mechanisms: (1) the dominance effect (which relates to the traits of the dominant species); and (2) the niche partitioning effect [which re...
Article
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Im Jahr 2019 wurde eine Erfassung der Segetalflora auf 30 Äckern in Südostniedersachsen durchgeführt. Die Flächen wurden über staatliche Förderprogramme bis zu 30 Jahre lang ackerwildkrautgerecht bewirtschaftet, wobei die Förderung von 2014 bis 2022 auf der Agrarumweltmaßnahme (AUM) BS3 „Mehrjährige Schonstreifen für Ackerwildkräuter“ basierte. Es...
Article
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Bereits seit Ende der 1980er-Jahre gibt es in Niedersachsen Agrarumweltmaßnahmen (AUM) zur Förderung gefährdeter Ackerwildkräuter. In der Förderperiode von 2014 bis 2022 wurde hierzu die AUM BS 3 „Mehrjährige Schonstreifen für Ackerwildkräuter“ angeboten. Im Landkreis Göttingen wurde mithilfe leitfadengestützter Interviews eine Befragung der an die...
Article
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Questions : While globalisation favours intensive yield-maximizing agriculture with cropping practices that entail agrobiodiversity loss, extensive production systems still exist in areas of marginal lands such as in mountainous regions or islands. It is overdue to study such systems, their sustainability and ecology as potential models for decentr...
Article
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Nutrient‐poor waters with small Utricularia species have been unknown in most of southern Europe and the Balkans. All the more notable are occurrences of Utricularia ochroleuca and Utricularia minor in north Greece. The records presented in this paper extend the known southeast European distribution boundaries of both species southward, and constit...
Article
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Colline/submontane acidic grasslands, elements of pre-industrial farming, are declining throughout Central Europe. As they correspond largely to the priority EU habitat type 6230 (Species-rich Nardus grasslands), a syntaxonomically sound delimitation is of importance. In the Rhenish Massif (Western Germany), acidic grasslands form diverse and synta...
Article
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Aims Ellenberg-type indicator values are expert-based rankings of plant species according to their ecological optima on main environmental gradients. Here we extend the indicator-value system proposed by Heinz Ellenberg and co-authors for Central Europe by incorporating other systems of Ellenberg-type indicator values (i.e., those using scales comp...
Article
Motivation: Indicator values are numerical values used to characterize the ecological niches of species and to estimate their occurrence along gradients. Indicator values on climatic and edaphic niches of plant species have received considerable attention in ecological research, whereas data on the optimal positioning of species along disturbance g...
Article
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In order to communicate issues relating to the protection of plant communities and their habitats more effectively to the general public, the Floristisch-Soziologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (FlorSoz) has proclaimed a “Plant Community of the Year” since 2019 and an explanatory text is published. This is intended to point out communities that are criti...
Article
Abstract Motivation: Indicator values are numerical values used to characterize the ecological niches of species and to estimate their occurrence along gradients. Indicator values on climatic and edaphic niches of plant species have received considerable attention in ecological research, whereas data on the optimal positioning of species along dist...
Article
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The degree of completeness of large-scale floristic inventories is often difficult to judge. We compared prior vascular plant species inventories of the Mediterranean island of Limnos (North Aegean, Greece) with 231 recent records from 2016–2021. Together with the recent records, the known number of vascular plant species on the island is 960 nativ...
Article
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Native seeds – opportunity or risk for biodiversity conservation? A thesis paper on the implementation of § 40 BNatSchG According to § 40 BNatSchG, since March 2020 only plants that “have their genetic origin in the area concerned” may be spread in the wild. This article discusses possibilities for implementing this regulation with regard to the...
Article
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Questions Two scientific disciplines, vegetation science and weed science, study arable weed vegetation, which has seen a strong diversity decrease in Europe over the last decades. We compared two collections of plot‐based vegetation records originating from these two disciplines. The aim was to check the suitability of the collections for joint an...
Article
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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...
Article
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Heather, Calluna vulgaris , is a key species of European dry heath and central determinant of its conservation status. The established Calluna life cycle concept describes four phases—pioneer, building, mature, and degeneration—distinguishable by growth and vitality characteristics of undisturbed plants grown from seeds. However, little is known ab...
Article
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In the summer of 2021, enormous wildfires in the Mediterranean eliminated huge areas of mainly coniferous forest, destroyed adjacent settlements and claimed the lives of many people. The fires indicate effects of climate change and expose consequences of rural demographic changes, deficits in regional and touristic development planning and shortcom...
Article
During the past decades, extensive parts of the Quercus brantii woodlands in the Zagros Mountains declined in size and habitat quality. We aimed to explore the variation of oak woodlands in the southern Zagros Mountains and to assess the vulnerability. The following questions were addressed in the study: Which edaphic and physiographic parameters a...
Article
Phytodiversity of Limnos (North Aegean, Greece)-an update and evaluation. The present update to the flora of the island of Limnos in the North Aegean, based on our field studies in 2016 and 2018-2021, raises the currently known number of vascular plant species to 960 native taxa, 63 established neophytes and 27 species of as yet casual status, a t...
Article
Electronic supplement to: Bergmeier, E., Ristow, M., Krause, J., Meyer, S. & Panitsa, M.: Phytodiversity of Limnos (North Aegean, Greece)—an update and evaluation. — Fl. Medit. 31: 233-246. 2021.
Article
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This is the fourteenth of a series of miscellaneous contributions, by various authors, where hitherto unpublished data relevant to both the Med-Checklist and the Euro+Med (or Sisyphus) projects are presented. This instalment deals with the families Apocynaceae, Compositae, Crassulaceae, Cyperaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Gramineae, Leguminosae, Nyctaginace...
Data
Supplementary figures: Fig. S1. Nerium oleander L.; Fig. S2. Mirabilis jalapa L. (photographs by P. Novák)
Article
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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...
Article
The management of agroecosystems affects biodiversity at all levels from genetic to food-web complexity. Low-input farming systems support higher levels of genetic, species and habitat diversity than high-input, industrial ones. In Greece, as in other Mediterranean countries, the role of traditional farming practices has been underlined in studies...
Article
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Motivation Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co‐occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information se...
Article
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The EU Water Framework Directive foresees the ecological assessment of surface waters against identified pressures. Nutrient loading is the main pressure impairing the ecological quality of lake ecosystems, and aquatic macrophytes are considered good indicators of ecological response. In this study, we statistically assessed different aspects of aq...
Article
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Climate change challenges important native timber species in Central Europe. The introduction of non-native tree species originating from warmer climates is one option to make Central European forests compatible to global warming. This, however, requires an assessment of the species’ growth requirements, and of its impact on biodiversity in its nat...
Article
Rice ecosystems vary greatly in climate, edaphic conditions, landscape heterogeneity, agricultural management and biodiversity. However, ongoing land use intensification and conversion to large-scale monoculture are threatening this diversity. We analyzed how rice-growing regions in Southeast Asia differ in diversity and composition of vascular pla...
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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...
Article
Significance Invasive alien species pose major threats to biodiversity and ecosystems. However, identifying drivers of invasion success has been challenging, in part because species can achieve invasiveness in different ways, each corresponding to different aspects of demographics and distribution. Employing a multidimensional perspective of invasi...
Article
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To comply with the International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (ICPN), we validate the names Saturejo spinosae-Scutellarietalia hirtae , Arenarion creticae , Verbascion spinosi and Lomelosio sphacioticae-Centranthetum sieberi . Two divergent interpretations of Article 3i about the point at issue in the validation of the first three names a...
Article
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Sacred groves are under-researched in Muslim countries so that their overall contribution to biodiversity conservation remains unknown. We studied 22 sacred groves and 45 surrounding woodlands in Northern Zagros, Iran, to compare taxonomic diversity, vegetation composition, and the conservation status of plant species. Sacred groves had higher taxo...
Article
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Deadwood is a fundamental forest habitat component and highly important for biodiversity conservation. Its availability, composition, size, categories and distribution depend on various structural and environmental factors (e.g., forest age, management, tree mortality, climate, decomposition). We analysed deadwood patterns along altitudinal gradien...
Article
Aim Vegetation types of Mediterranean thermophilous pine forests dominated by Pinus brutia, P. halepensis, P. pinaster, and P. pinea were studied in various areas. However, a comprehensive formal vegetation classification of these forests based on a detailed data analysis has never been developed. Our aim is to provide the first broad‐scale classif...
Article
Aims (a) To determine the contribution of current macro‐environmental factors in explaining the phylogenetic structure of European forest vegetation, (b) to map and describe spatial patterns in their phylogenetic structure and (c) to examine which lineages are the most important contributors to phylogenetic clustering and whether their contribution...
Article
Aims Humans have deeply eroded biogeographic barriers, causing a rapid spread of alien species across biomes. The Mediterranean Basin is a biodiversity hotspot but is also known as a hub of alien plant invasions, particularly in its European part. Yet, a comprehensive inventory of alien species in the area is missing and understanding of the driver...
Article
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The successful implementation of contract-based nature conservation in privately-owned forests requires a framework of reasonable operational measures. Our study aimed at developing such a framework by; 1) defining forest conservation objects including structures, processes, and habitat types, 2) assessing their conservation value based on the need...
Article
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Agricultural intensification has led to dramatic diversity losses and impoverishment of the arable vegetation in much of Europe. We analyzed the status of farmland phytodiversity and its determinants in 2016 in northwest Germany by surveying 200 conventionally managed fields cultivated with seven crops. The study was combined with an analysis of ed...
Article
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Aim The EUNIS Habitat Classification is a widely used reference framework for European habitat types (habitats), but it lacks formal definitions of individual habitats that would enable their unequivocal identification. Our goal was to develop a tool for assigning vegetation‐plot records to the habitats of the EUNIS system, use it to classify a Eur...
Article
Agri-environment measures to support biodiversity in intensively used agricultural landscapes have been implemented in many European countries, but the large-scale downward trend in many species groups continues. The arable flora is one of the species groups that suffered the steepest declines in European cultural landscapes. Despite their fundamen...
Article
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Zusammenfassung: Die European Vegetation Checklist (EuroVegChecklist; MUCINA et al. 2016) ist eine Referenzliste der Vegetationseinheiten Europas samt angrenzender Gebiete. Sie bietet einen nomenklatorisch geprüf-ten Bezugsrahmen mit ausführlicher Synonymie aller pflanzensoziologischen Klassen, Ordnungen und Verbände und kann zur syntaxonomischen S...
Article
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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...
Article
Aims: i) To disentangle the global patterns of native and alien plant diversity on coastal sand dune ecosystems across habitats and floristic kingdoms, ii) to determine the main drivers of variation in species richness in native and alien species in these endangered ecosystems, and iii) to test for an interaction between spatial scale and native-al...
Cover Page
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SET IN THE NORTH-WESTERN CORNER OF GREECE – where three countries, Greece, Albania and North Macedonia, come together around two lakes – the Prespa National Park (PNP) covers an area of 257 km². It extends altitudinally from around 850 metres at the level of the lakes – Megali Prespa and Mikri Prespa, or Great and Lesser Prespa lakes respectively –...
Article
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Aims : This study aims to contribute to the knowledge of European freshwater lake ecosystems with updated and new information on aquatic plant communities, by conducting national-scale phytosociological research of freshwater lake vegetation in Greece. Moreover, it investigates the relationship between aquatic plant communities and lake environment...
Article
Questions: What are the plant communities and vegetation pattern on shorelines of a hypersaline desiccating lake and which environmental factors influence the zonation pattern of these communities? How is the species richness along salt and moisture gradients? Which plant communities and rare species are threatened by the impact of lake shrinkage?...
Article
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...
Technical Report
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Η Ομάδα Βιοποικιλότητας του προγράμματος Terra Lemnia κατέγραψε την υφιστάμενη κατάσταση της βιοποικιλότητας στη Λήμνο και μελέτησε τη διασύνδεσή της με τις υπάρχουσες γεωργοκτηνοτροφικές πρακτικές έχοντας ως κύριο άξονα τις μάντρες του νησιού. Καταγράφοντας τη χλωρίδα, την εντομοπανίδα και τα πτηνά της Λημνιακής υπαίθρου, έγινε μια προσπάθεια κατα...
Article
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Based on Pavlides (1985) and Strid & al. (2017), as a result of three further years of field research (2017–2019), a new update of the reference lists of vascular plants of the Prespa National Park, Greece, is presented. It features 259 taxa, of which 178 are new area records and the rest are 21st century reconfirmations. Nineteen taxa are reported...
Article
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Aims: This study aims to contribute to the knowledge of European freshwater lake ecosystems with updated and new information on aquatic plant communities, by conducting national-scale phytosociological research of freshwater lake vegetation in Greece. Moreover, it investigates the relationship between aquatic plant communities and lake environmenta...
Article
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Ruderal plant species typically occur and prevail in frequently disturbed areas especially in sites with pronounced direct or indirect human activity. In Greece ruderal taxa (both exclusive and non-exclusive) account for 23.9% of all recorded plant taxa. This study presents an analysis of the ruderal plant diversity patterns in the 13 floristic reg...
Article
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Questions To improve our knowledge on how environmental conditions determine the development of high‐value Calluna vulgaris heathland habitats, we studied the floristic and structural characteristics of heathland plant communities across North Germany and how they are influenced by edaphic, climatic and management factors. We ask how heathland deve...
Article
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Aim: Alien plant species can cause severe ecological and economic problems, and therefore attract a lot of research interest in biogeography and related fields. To identify potential future invasive species, we need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the abundances of invasive tree species in their new ranges, and whether these mechanis...