Jiří Danihelka

Masaryk University | MUNI · Department of Botany and Zoology

Numerous plant species are expanding their native ranges due to anthropogenic environmental change. Because cytotypes of polyploid complexes often show similar morphologies, there may be unnoticed range expansions (i.e. cryptic invasions) of one cytotype into regions where only the other cytotype is native. We critically revised herbarium specimens...

The recruitment life stage, including germination and early seedling establishment, is the most vulnerable life stage of plants and has cascading effects on plant performance at later life stages. However, surprisingly little is known on the eco-evolutionary processes that determine the success of biological invasions at this life stage. We perform...

This article describes FloraVeg.EU, a new online database with open‐access information on European vegetation units (phytosociological syntaxa), vegetated habitats, and plant taxa. It consists of three modules. (1) The Vegetation module includes 149 phytosociological classes, 378 orders and 1305 alliances of an updated version of the EuroVegCheckli...

As a result of human activities, a considerable part of European vascular plants and their populations are non-native. Since the publication of previous studies summarizing the composition and structure of European alien flora, our knowledge has increased, and new alien plant inventories and updates to existing ones have been published. The aim of...

Numerous plant species are expanding their native ranges due to anthropogenic environmental change. Because cytotypes of polyploid complexes show often similar morphologies, there may be unnoticed range expansions (i.e., cryptic invasions) of one cytotype into regions where only the other cytotype is native. We critically revised 13,078 herbarium s...

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...

Changes in species' native range size and occupancy have been dramatically accelerated by anthropogenic pressures in the last centuries. At the same time humans have introduced thousands of species beyond their historic range limits, and some of these have established self-sustaining populations (i.e. become naturalized). It is known that particula...

Over the past 60 years, natural habitats have been affected by various anthropogenic pressures. However, little is known about how these pressures have influenced the species composition of whole floras across large areas. We used a large database of the Czech flora to assess broad-scale temporal trends in temperate European flora over the last 60...

This manuscript provides a review of the phytosociological nomenclature of the European syntaxa included in the classes Ammophiletea arundinaceae , Honckenyo peploidis-Elymetea arenarii , and Koelerio glaucae-Corynephoretea canescentis . The nomenclature has been refined and updated following the 4 th edition of the International Code of Phytosocio...

Aim In salt-affected environments, salinity shapes ecosystem functions and species composition. Apart from salinity, however, we know little about how soil chemical factors affect plant species. We hypothesized that specific ions, most of which contribute to salinity, co-determine plant niche differentiation. We asked if the importance of ions diff...

The thirteenth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 88 taxa in the genera Alcea, Ambrosia, Anacamptis, Anchusa, Anoda, Atocion, Ballota, Bothriochloa, Bunias, Conium, Epipogium, Kickxia, Kitaibela, Lavatera, Lawrencia, Limodorum, Listera, Malope, Malva, Neotinea, Nonea, Nuphar, Nymph...

Considering the growing demand for plant trait data and taking into account the lack of trait data from Eastern Europe, especially from its steppic region, we launched a new Ukrainian Plant Trait Database (UkrTrait v. 1.0) aiming at collecting all the available plant trait data from Ukraine. To facilitate further use of this database, we linked the...

Urban areas exert a significant influence on plant species assemblages. The mosaic of different urban land uses is reflected in the distribution patterns of different plant groups. Here we present the results of the first systematic and detailed floristic survey of the city of Brno, Czech Republic. We studied the flora of Brno from 2011 to 2021, an...

Balázs Deák 52 | Guillaume Decocq 53 | Iwona Dembicz 54 | Jürgen Dengler 55,56 | Valter Di Cecco 57 | Jan Dick 58 | Martin Diekmann 59 | Hartmut Dierschke 60, † | Thomas Dirnböck 61 | Inken Doerfler 62 | Jiří Doležal 63,64 | Ute Döring 65 | Tomasz Durak 66 | Ciara Dwyer 67 | Rasmus Ejrnaes 68 | Inna Ermakova 69 | Brigitta Erschbamer 70 | Giuliano F...

Current status of the genus Viola (Violaceae) in South America. (Link to the Seminar replicated at Instituto de Botánica Darwinion in October 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON5gst06EII)

Nomenclatural and taxonomic information are crucial for curating botanical collections. In the course of changing methods for systematic and taxonomic studies, classification systems changed considerably over time (Dalla Torre and Harms 1900, Durand and Bentham 1888, Endlicher 1836, Angiosperm Phylogeny Group et al. 2016). Various approaches to sto...

Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species' ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, especially across different biomes. We compiled a worldwide collection of long-term permanent vegetati...

Herbarium collections shape our understanding of Earth’s flora and are crucial for addressing global change issues. Their formation, however, is not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in natural history collections, herbaria have received comparative...

The twelfth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 105 taxa in the genera Androsace, Anthemis, Aristolochia, Berteroa, Celtis, Cnidium, Cynodon, Descurainia, Echium, Erechtites, Euphorbia, Homogyne, Laserpitium, Linaria, Pinus, Rosa, Sesleria, Spiraea and Verbena. These maps were produ...

Aims The summit grasslands of many European mountain ranges were historically used for summer grazing, which ceased in the 20th century. These grasslands are changing, partly through succession after abandonment and partly owing to environmental changes. Subalpine vegetation is also affected by artificially reduced avalanche frequency. Recent conse...

We present the third edition of the complete catalogue of the alien flora of the Czech Republic, which follows the 2002 and 2012 editions. It has been updated by incorporating new data collected over the last decade and reassessing the current status of taxa based on improved taxonomic and ecological knowledge. All changes in the taxon listing from...

The biogeographic origin of the species‐rich steppe grasslands in central Europe has long been debated. The alternative hypotheses are long‐term species persistence in situ versus immigration from the south‐east, either after the last glacial maximum (LGM) or after the Neolithic landscape deforestation. We ask whether macroclimate‐based models of h...

The eleventh part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 85 taxa in the genera Agrostemma, Berula, Bromus, Carex, Corydalis, Echinocystis, Festuca, Himantoglossum, Lychnis, Ophrys, Ornithopus, Pseudofumaria, Quercus, Salix, Sium and Vaccaria. These maps were produced by taxonomic experts ba...

The genus Viola (Violaceae) is among the 40–50 largest genera among angiosperms, yet its taxonomy has not been revised for nearly a century. In the most recent revision, by Wilhelm Becker in 1925, the then-known 400 species were distributed among 14 sections and numerous unranked groups. Here, we provide an updated, comprehensive classification of...

Ecological theory posits that temporal stability patterns in plant populations are associated with differences in species’ ecological strategies. However, empirical evidence is lacking about which traits, or trade-offs, underlie species stability, specially across different ecosystems. To address this, we compiled a global collection of long-term p...

The Czech Botanical Society voted for the Summer Pheasant’s Eye (Adonis aestivalis) as Plant of the Year 2022. It is a member of a Eurasian genus comprising up to 33 species, in the Czech flora represented by the indigenous perennial yellow flowering Spring Pheasant’s Eye (A. vernalis) and two red-flowering annuals, A. aestivalis and the Large Phea...

The genus Viola (Violaceae) is among the 40-50 largest genera among angiosperms, yet its 16 taxonomy has not been revised for nearly a century. In the most recent revision, by Wilhelm Becker 17 in 1925, the then known 400 species were distributed among 14 sections and numerous unranked 18 groups. Here we provide an updated, comprehensive classifica...

Halophytic habitats are distinctive components of the landscape in southern Moravia, Czech Republic, and the Pulkau valley in northern Lower Austria. We provide a historical overview of their flora and vegetation since the early 19th century and describe the current state assessed in the field at all remaining sites in 2020. We summarized the histo...

Analysing temporal patterns in plant communities is extremely important to quantify the extent and the consequences of ecological changes, especially considering the current biodiversity crisis. Long‐term data collected through the regular sampling of permanent plots represent the most accurate resource to study ecological succession, analyse the s...

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, numerous alien species were introduced with iron ore into the industrial region in the northeast of the Czech Republic, mainly from southern Ukraine. Their occurrences on iron ore heaps were carefully documented by the local botanist Zdeněk Kilián and published in a series of four articles, co-authored by František...

Herbarium collections shape our understanding of the world's flora and are crucial for addressing global change and biodiversity conservation. The formation of such natural history collections, however, are not free from sociopolitical issues of immediate relevance. Despite increasing efforts addressing issues of representation and colonialism in n...

Analysing temporal patterns in plant communities is extremely important to quantify the extent and the consequences of ecological changes, especially considering the current biodiversity crisis. Long-term data collected through the regular sampling of permanent plots represent the most accurate resource to study ecological succession, analyse the s...

Question: Infrequent events of extreme drought or extreme temperatures may considerably affect the structure and functioning of vegetation. Here we ask how fluctuations in precipitation and temperature shape year-to-year dynamics and plant species composition in a dry grassland community, and how this variation affects plants with different life hi...

Aims Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the...

In the late 1950s and the 1960s, numerous alien species were introduced with iron ore to the industrial region in the north-east of the Czech Republic, mainly from southern Ukraine. Their occurrences were carefully documented by local botanists, Zdeněk Kilián and František Krkavec, and numerous specimens collected by the former are stored in severa...

The tenth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 44 taxa in the genera Carex, Colchicum, Cytisus, Draba, Dracocephalum, Jurinea, Klasea, Lactuca, Onopordum, Petrorhagia, Serratula, Silybum and Xanthium. These maps were produced by taxonomic experts based on examined herbarium specimens...

Questions The human‐related spread of alien plants has serious environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Therefore, it is important to know which habitats are most threatened by invasion and why. We studied a wide range of European grasslands to assess: (a) which alien species are the most successful invaders in grasslands; (b) how invasion levels d...

The Pladias (Plant Diversity Analysis and Synthesis) Database of the Czech Flora and Vegetation was developed by the Pladias project team in 2014-2018 and has been continuously updated since then. The flora section of the database contains critically revised information on the Czech vascular flora, including 13.6 million plant occurrence records, w...

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...

A herbarium specimen of Heracleum mantegazzianum collected in 1871 in the spa of Teplice in northern Bohemia by Lajos Haynald, archbishop of Kalocsa-Bács in Hungary, was recently found in the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest (herbarium BP). To our knowledge, this is the earliest preserved specimen of this invasive species from the terri...

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...

Here we report the first record of Caryopteris ×clandonensis (Lamiaceae) outside cultivation in the Czech Republic. In September 2019, about 10 plants, some of them flowering, were found at the southern periphery of the village of Rozdrojovice at the northwestern outskirts of the city of Brno (south-eastern Czech Republic). A herbarium specimen is...

Questions Compensatory dynamics are described as one of the main mechanisms that increase community stability, e.g. where decreases of some species on a year‐to‐year basis are offset by an increase in others. Deviations from perfect synchrony between species (asynchrony) have therefore been advocated as an important mechanism underlying biodiversit...

The ninth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 83 taxa in the genera Aphanes, Buglossoides, Calamagrostis, Carex, Cerastium, Chenopodium, Corynephorus, Crypsis, Dorycnium, Equisetum, Marrubium, Montia, Oxalis, Pilosella, Pteris and Spergula. These maps were produced by taxonomic expe...

The stability of ecological communities is critical for the stable provisioning of ecosystem services, such as food and forage production, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility. Greater biodiversity is expected to enhance stability across years by decreasing synchrony among species, but the drivers of stability in nature remain poorly resolved....

The stability of ecological communities is critical for the stable provisioning of ecosystem services, such as food and forage production, carbon sequestration, and soil fertility. Greater biodiversity is expected to enhance stability across years by decreasing synchrony among species, but the drivers of stability in nature remain poorly resolved....

Question: Infrequent events of extreme drought or extreme temperatures may considerably affect the structure and functioning of vegetation. Here we ask how fluctuations in precipitation and temperature shape year-to-year dynamics and plant species composition in a dry grassland community, and how this variation affects plants with different life hi...

The Late Pleistocene landscape in northern Eurasia and North America was inhabited by a specific megafaunal complex, which largely disappeared during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. Vegetation changes are considered as one of the factors responsible for these extinctions, but the structure and composition of the Pleistocene vegetation are stil...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

The eighth part of the series on the distributions of vascular plants in the Czech Republic includes grid maps of 106 taxa in the genera Abutilon, Achillea, Arctium, Arenaria, Arnoseris, Carex, Chamaecytisus, Cornus, Diphasiastrum, Echinops, Galeopsis, Galium, Huperzia, Isoëtes, Lycopodiella, Lycopodium, Moehringia, Orobanche, Phelipanche, Prunus,...

The Herbarium of Masaryk University in Brno (BRNU) currently contains about 670 000 specimens. In 2012, we joined the informal international consortium Virtual Herbaria and started using the herbarium information system Jacq, developed by Heimo Rainer and collaborators at the Vienna University. Currently, about 140 000 specimens of vascular plants,...

It is generally acknowledged that land-use structure and its changes influence levels of invasion by alien plants across the landscape. In this study, we asked how land-use changes over the last 180 years influenced spatial patterns of alien plant invasions in the Czech Republic. We hypothesize that (i) dynamically changing landscapes with a high l...

Electronic Appendix 2. Genome sizes and GC contents of the Czech vascular flora

A specimen of Dracocephalum parviflorum collected by the Bohemian German-speaking hobby botanist Robert Wihan in 1928 in the town of Pec pod Sněžkou in the Krkonoše Mts in north-eastern Bohemia was found in the herbarium of the National Museum in Prague. The plant was found near an abandoned furnace used in the 19th century for the production of ar...

Field guide (key) to the vascular flora of the Czech Republic. Česká květena je díky své poloze uprostřed Evropy velmi bohatá a různorodá. V době ledové ji obohatily rostliny chladného severu, později teplomilné rostliny z jižní Evropy a stále ji ovlivňuje blízkost dvou velkých evropských pohoří, Alp a Karpat. Mnohé další rostliny se k nám dostal...

Life story of Professor Josef Podpěra, a renown geobotanist, bryologist and founder of the Institute of Botany at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, is described.

Recently available extensive datasets on plant distributions across the whole national floras and on functional traits of such floras, and increasing availability of fine-scale information on the abiotic environment make it possible to explore the trends in plant traits across geographical space and explain them as a function of large-scale environ...

Veronica gentianoides is an attractive species native to the Caucasus, north-eastern Anatolia and Crimea. It has been cultivated in European botanical gardens and as an ornamental plant since the late 18th century. In the Annotated Catalogue of the Moravian Flora published by Miroslav Smejkal in 1980, this species was reported to be a putative casu...

The content of DNA in the somatic, unreplicated cell nuclei (genome size) and DNA base composition (GC content) are the basic genomic parameters that can be measured by flow cytometry. Genome size, or ploidy level, can affect many plant properties and are therefore included as important features in modern biological floras and plant trait databases...

Aim Climate is an important factor controlling plant distributions. However, it is not yet fully understood how climate interacts with human impacts or whether the effects of these factors differ between native and alien species. Facing ongoing climate change and urbanization, we explore the effects of climate on plant species richness and composit...

Since the publication of the Checklist and Red List of higher plants of Brandenburg in 2006 numerous changes in the flora of Berlin and Brandenburg have appeared. Some taxa have been newly found or refound, some have got extinct, others have become established, andtheir st atus has to be changed. Aim of this contribution is to indicate and document...

Research on the Czech flora has a long tradition and yielded a large number of records on the occurrence of plants. Several independent electronic databases were established during the last three decades in order to collect and manage these records. However, this fragmentation and the different characteristics of each database strongly limit the ut...

Persistent seed banks are predicted to have an important impact on population genetic processes by increasing effective population size and storing past genetic diversity. Accordingly, persistent seed banks may buffer genetic effects of disturbance, fragmentation and/or selection. However, empirical studies surveying the relationship between aboveg...