Martin Hejda

• The Czech Academy of Sciences

Aim Despite the evidenced importance of insects in savannah ecosystems, the drivers of their diversity patterns remain poorly understood, particularly in the Afrotropical region. This study addresses part of this gap by investigating the effects of climate, habitat, disturbance and vegetation variables on species richness and community composition...

Alien plant invasions have been systematically studied for more than half a century and we already have extensive scientific evidence of their negative role in the current biodiversity decline. Here we aim to draw attention to expansive plants, i.e. native plant species that exhibit similar ecological behaviour to invasive alien plants, being promo...

We studied the short-term dynamics of the occurrence of alien plant species in a South African savanna. Within the MOSAIK (Monitoring Savanna Biodiversity in the Kruger National Park) project, plant species were recorded in a representative set of 60 plots, 50 m × 50 m in size, across the entire KNP in 2019–2020, distributed to cover a range of sav...

The savanna habitats often harbour abundant and species-rich bat communities. Whether they represent mere ad hoc assemblages of incidentally co-occurring forms or distinct entities integrated by locally specific adaptations and balanced resource partitionings is largely unknown, as are the natural drivers shaping community variation at different sp...

I am one of the collaborators. I have provided the data for DR Congo.

Protected areas are expected to harbour fewer invasive plants due to the absence of anthropogenic disturbance and greater resistance of natural vegetation to invasion. Our study aimed to quantify the impacts of selected invasive plants on native plant species richness, diversity, and composition in five protected areas of Nepal spread across ~ 3403...

Despite the recognized importance of insects in savannah ecosystems, the drivers of their diversity patterns remain poorly understood, particularly in the Afrotropical region. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impacts of climate, habitat, disturbance, and vegetation variables on the diversity of phytophagous moths (Lepidoptera) and...

This is the first study providing an up-to-date account of the alien flora in Uzbekistan and analyzing the relationship between the invasion status (casual, naturalized, invasive) of alien plants in this country and their life histories, regions of origin, and habitat affiliations. The data were collected from literature, herbaria, and field survey...

The savanna ecosystem is dominated by grasses, which are a key food source for many species of grazing animals. This relationship creates a diverse mosaic of habitats and contributes to the high grass species richness of savannas. However, how grazing interacts with environmental conditions in determining grass species richness and abundance in sav...

Plant invasion science has made a substantial progress in documenting the impacts of aliens, but comparisons with the impacts of native dominants are still rare. Further, the impacts on larger spatial scales remain poorly understood. We recorded the impacts of 10 native and nine invasive dominant plants in the Czech Republic on species richness and...

Parthenium hysterophorus L. (Parthenium), an annual to biennial herbaceous plant, is well established in parts of the Kruger National Park (KNP). Over the past two decades Parthenium has become widespread in the southern region of KNP, demonstrating an ability to spread rapidly. While large programmes and substantial financial resources have been d...

Biological invasions are a threat to protected areas globally; however, the relative lack of studies quantifying the ecological impacts impairs informed decision-making. We selected three annual alien plants, widespread in the riparian habitats of the Kruger National Park, South Africa: Datura innoxia, Parthenium hysterophorus, and Xanthium strumar...

Biological invasions remain one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and livelihoods, and are predicted to increase due to climate change and globalization. In this study, we produced a comprehensive checklist of alien plants in Nigeria from online flora databases, herbarium records, published field surveys, and questionnaires administered to bo...

Biological invasions remain one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and livelihoods, and this is predicted to increase due to climate change and globalization. In this study, we produced a comprehensive checklist of alien plants in Nigeria from online flora databases, herbarium records, published field surveys, and questionnaires administered t...

This first inventory of casual, naturalized, and invasive alien plants in Iran provides a knowledge base for managing the threats associated with plant invasions in this country. Based on a wide range of data sources, including published work, reports, online databases, botanical records, and field observations, we identified 311 alien vascular pla...

Major regional gaps exist in the reporting and accessibility of naturalized plant species distribution data, especially within Southeast Asia. Here, we present the Malesian Naturalized Alien Flora database (MalNAF), the first standardized island-group level checklist of naturalized vascular plant species for the Malesian phytogeographical region. W...

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...

Background Thanks to the high diversity of ecosystems and habitats, South Africa harbours tremendous diversity of insects. The Kruger National Park, due to its position close to the border between two biogeographic regions and high heterogeneity of environmental conditions, represents an insufficiently studied hotspot of lepidopteran diversity. Dur...

Major regional gaps exist in the reporting and accessibility of naturalized plant species distribution data, especially within Asia. Here, we present the Malesian Naturalized Alien Flora database (MalNAF), the first standardized island-group level checklist of naturalized vascular plant species for the Malesian phytogeographical region. We used Mal...

To identify factors that drive plant species richness in South-African savanna and explore their relative importance, we sampled plant communities across habitats difering in water availability, disturbance, and bedrock, using the Kruger National Park as a model system. We made plant inventories in 60 plots of 50 × 50 m, located in three distinct h...

The interspecific plant interactions along grazing and aridity stress gradients represent a major research issue in plant ecology. However, the combined effects of these two factors on plant-plant interactions have been poorly studied in the northeast of Iran. To fill this knowledge gap, 144 plots were established in 12 study sites with different g...

Invasive alien plants are known to reduce the diversity of recipient communities. However, there is an ongoing debate on whether or not native dominant species have similar effects. To answer this question, we compared herbaceous dominant species of plant communities in central Europe, 10 of which were native and nine alien to this region. We sampl...

Aridity and intensive grazing have been confirmed to affect the facilitative effects of dryland shrubs. However, their combined effects on plant-plant interactions have rarely been tested. To test how these two factors affect relations between plants, we analyzed 144 plots (under shrub canopy vs. open areas) at 12 sampling areas established in the...

Protected areas play an important role as refuges from invasive species impacts on biodiversity. Within the MOSAIK (Monitoring Savanna Biodiversity in the Kruger National Park) project, plant species were recorded in a representative set of 60 plots, 50 × 50 m in size, across the entire KNP, distributed so as to cover a range of savanna habitats, i...

Questions (i) Do patterns of species diversity and composition differ between the plots exposed to high versus low grazing intensity? (ii) Do these differences vary among three regions with different climate, representing the gradient from the arid to sub‐humid conditions? Location northeastern Iran Methods We compared plots intensively grazed by...

In the original publication, incorrect version of Supplementary material (Appendix S2) has been published. The corrected Supplementary material is provided in this correction.

Ornamental plants are an important component of urban floras and a significant source of alien plant invasions to the surrounding landscapes. We studied ornamental flora across 174 settlements in the Czech Republic, Central Europe. The aims of the study were to (i) identify clusters of sites that are defined as distinctive groups of ornamental taxa...

Most studies on the impacts of plant invasions focus on species richness or diversity of invaded communities, but much less attention has been paid to structural changes such as the representation of species with different traits. To bridge this knowledge gap, we assess the impact of dominant species on the trait composition of recipient communitie...

Understanding the responses of vegetation characteristics and soil properties to grazing in different precipitation regimes is useful for the management of rangelands, especially in the arid regions. In northeastern Iran, we studied the responses of vegetation to livestock grazing in three regions with different climates: arid, semiarid, and subhum...

The paper provides an inventory of the naturalized vascular flora of Ghana, based on newly gathered information from the literature and consultations with local experts. We adopted a rather conservative approach by including only species for which strong evidence exists that they are alien in Ghana. We recorded 291 species of naturalized alien plan...

Recent research on plant invasions indicates that some parts of the world are understudied with temperate Asia among them. To contribute towards closing this gap, we provide a standardized list of invasive alien plant species with their distributions in 45 Russian regions, and relate the variation in their richness to climate, socioeconomic paramet...

Non-native invasive plants are among the main threats to global biodiversity, including insects, and it is thus important to understand the mechanisms of how invasive plants impact native species. The community composition of nocturnal Lepidoptera was studied in the Czech Republic (Central Europe) in stands of native deciduous trees and in stands d...

Despite an existing India-wide inventory of alien plant species, an inventory documenting the occurrence of naturalized alien plant species in each of the Indian states (including union territories) was not available yet. We compiled from the literature a list of naturalized alien vascular plant species with data on their occurrence in 33 Indian st...

Aim To investigate the community‐level impacts of woody plant invasions using Robinia pseudoacacia as a model species, affecting organisms on different trophic levels: vascular plants, nocturnal Lepidoptera and birds. Location Czech Republic, central Europe. Methods Nineteen plots with strong dominance of the invader were compared to 20 plots wit...

Aim Using three North American species invading Europe (Aster novi‐belgii, Lupinus polyphyllus and Solidago canadensis) and three European species invading North America (Agrostis capillaris, Bromus tectorum and Cirsium arvense), we tested (1) whether the dominant species impact differs between its native and invaded ranges and (2) whether the impa...

Ornamental plants constitute an important source of alien, and potentially invasive species, but also include a substantial part of native flora and consist of taxa that occur both in the wild and in cultivation; yet garden floras are largely ignored in ecological studies.We studied ornamental plants in the Czech Republic in order to provide detail...

P. (2016): Dark side of the fence: ornamental plants as a source of wild-growing flora in the Czech Republic. – Preslia 88: 163–184. Ornamental plants constitute an important source of alien, and potentially invasive species, but also include a substantial part of native flora and consist of taxa that occur both in the wild and in cultivation ; yet...

Aim Habitat types are involved in shaping biological traits of their resident native species and thus they determine, to a large extent, in which habitats particular species will succeed if invading outside their native range. However, the correspondences between habitats that invasive aliens occupy in the native and invaded ranges are poorly known...

A fundamental assumption in invasion biology is that most invasive species exhibit enhanced performance in their introduced range relative to their home ranges. This idea has given rise to numerous hypotheses explaining "invasion success" by virtue of altered ecological and evolutionary pressures. There are surprisingly few data, however, testing t...

Background/Question/Methods There is a growing body of literature assessing the impact of alien invasive plants on resident species and ecosystems, but a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between alien species traits and environmental settings of invasion on the characteristics of impacts was missing. Based on 287 publications with 155...

With the growing body of literature assessing the impact of invasive alien plants on resident species and ecosystems, a comprehensive assessment of the relationship between invasive species traits and environmental settings of invasion on the characteristics of impacts is needed. Based on 287 publications with 1551 individual cases that addressed t...

Appendix S2. List of species that appeared in studies on impact of invasive plants included in the study.

Appendix S1. References to case studies on impact of invasive plants.

Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 702–708 Biological invasions cause ecological and economic impacts across the globe. However, it is unclear whether there are strong patterns in terms of their major effects, how the vulnerability of different ecosystems varies and which ecosystem services are at greatest risk. We present a global meta-analysis of 199 art...

The accelerating rates of international trade, travel, and transport in the latter half of the twentieth century have led to the progressive mixing of biota from across the world and the number of species introduced to new regions continues to increase. The importance of biogeographic, climatic, economic, and demographic factors as drivers of this...

1. The view of post-mining sites is rapidly changing among ecologists and conservationists, as sensitive restoration using spontaneous succession may turn such sites into biodiversity refuges in human-exploited regions. However, technical reclamation, consisting of covering the sites by topsoil, sowing fast-growing herb mixtures and planting trees,...

Human activities have altered the composition of biotas through two fundamental processes: native extinctions and alien introductions. Both processes affect the taxonomic (i.e., species identity) and phylogenetic (i.e., species evolutionary history) structure of species assemblages. However, it is not known what the relative magnitude of these effe...

Aim To assess how habitat affinities in the native distribution range influence the invasion success of 282 central European neophytes (alien plants introduced after ad 1500). Location Czech Republic. Methods Classification trees were used to determine which native habitats donate the most alien species, the correspondence between habitats occupied...

Much attention has been paid to negative effects of alien species on resident communities but studies that quantify community‐level effects of a number of invasive plants are scarce. We address this issue by assessing the impact of 13 species invasive in the Czech Republic on a wide range of plant communities. Vegetation in invaded and uninvaded pl...

Effect of invasion by Impatiens glandulifera (Balsaminaceae) on the community characteristics and species composition of invaded riparian communities was studied at six rivers in the Czech Republic. Two approaches were used: space for time substitution approach, i.e., comparing invaded and uninvaded sites under the same habitat conditions, and remo...