Milan Chytry

Masaryk University | MUNI · Department of Botany and Zoology

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...

Aim Humans have spread plants globally for millennia, inadvertently causing ecological disruptions. However, biological invasions also provide a unique opportunity to study the process of niche dynamics, through which species adapt their niche when confronted with novel environments. Focusing on the Mediterranean Basin, we assessed 1) which traits...

Elton’s biotic resistance hypothesis posits that species-rich communities are more resistant to invasion. However, it remains unknown how species, phylogenetic and functional richness, along with environmental and human-impact factors, collectively affect plant invasion as alien species progress along the introduction–naturalization–invasion contin...

Aim The influence of species phylogenetic relatedness on the formation of insular assemblages remains understudied in functional island biogeography, especially for terrestrial habitat islands (i.e. distinct habitat patches embedded in a matrix that differ in the prevailing environmental conditions). Here, we tested three eco‐evolutionary hypothese...

Aims The accurate classification of habitats is essential for effective biodiversity conservation. The goal of this study was to harness the potential of deep learning to advance habitat identification in Europe. We aimed to develop and evaluate models capable of assigning vegetation‐plot records to the habitats of the European Nature Information S...

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...

Background Grasslands provide fundamental ecosystem services that are supported by their plant diversity. However, the importance of plant taxonomic diversity for the diversity of other taxa in grasslands remains poorly understood. Here, we studied the associations between plant communities, soil chemistry and soil microbiome in a wooded meadow of...

Elton’s biotic resistance hypothesis posits that species-rich communities are more resistant to invasion. Yet, there is evidence that species richness alone may not fully explain community resistance, as phylogenetic and functional richness, along with environmental factors and human-induced disturbances, also play pivotal roles. Additionally, it r...

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...

EXPERT – an algorithm for assigning relevés to plant communities and habitat types in the Netherlands An expert system called EXPERT has been developed for the identification of vegetation plot descriptions (relevés) in the Netherlands. It is online available as freeware on www.synbiosys.alterra.nl. The algorithm runs in JUICE as well as in TURBOV...

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...

The Mediterranean Basin has historically been subject to alien plant invasions that threaten its unique biodiversity. This seasonally dry and densely populated region is undergoing severe climatic and socioeconomic changes, and it is unclear whether these changes will worsen or mitigate plant invasions. Predictions are often biased, as species may...

According to the International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature, a younger name of a syntaxon may be conserved against its older name to improve the stability of the nomenclature and avoid misunderstandings in scientific communication. Here, we propose conserving the name Philonotidion seriatae Hinterlang 1992 for arctic-alpine, bryophyte-dom...

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 global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land-use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models primarily focus on quantifying impacts on species richness and abundance, often overlooking the ecological relevance of species traits and their contributions to ecos...

Terrestrial ecosystems affect climate by reflecting solar irradiation, evaporative cooling, and carbon sequestration. Yet very little is known about how plant traits affect climate regulation processes (CRPs) in different habitat types. Here, we used linear and random forest models to relate the community-weighted mean and variance values of 19 pla...

The first comprehensive phytosociological classification of all vegetation types in Europe (EuroVegChecklist; Applied Vegetation Science, 2016, 19, 3-264) contained brief descriptions of each type. However, these descriptions were not standardized and mentioned only the most distinct features of each vegetation type. The practical application of th...

Aims: The Raunkiaer's system classifies vascular plants into life forms based on the position of renewal buds during periods unfavourable for plant growth. Despite the importance of Raunkiaer's system for ecological research, a study exploring the diversity and distribution of life forms on a continental scale is missing. We aim to (i) map the dive...

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...

The relationship between phylogenetic diversity (PD) and functional diversity (FD) is important for understanding the mechanisms of community assembly. The traditional view assumes a coupled (positively correlated) relationship between these two diversity measures, suggesting that competitive exclusion and environmental filtering are important driv...

Global change has accelerated local species extinctions and colonizations, often resulting in losses and gains of evolutionary lineages with unique features. Do these losses and gains occur randomly across the phylogeny? We quantified: temporal changes in plant phylogenetic diversity (PD); and the phylogenetic relatedness (PR) of lost and gained sp...

Semi-dry grasslands are among the most species-rich plant communities in the world, harbouring many specialised and threatened species. Most of these grasslands were traditionally maintained by grazing and hay-making. After traditional management ended, protected areas were established and conservation management was introduced to protect the most...

Background Grasslands provide fundamental ecosystem services that are supported by their plant diversity. However, the importance of plant taxonomic diversity for the diversity of other taxa in grasslands remains an open question. Here, we studied the associations between plant communities, soil chemistry and soil microbiome in wooded meadow of Čer...

The class Montio-Cardaminetea includes vegetation of springs with constant water flow. These habitats, which function as islands for highly specialized and sensitive biota, are endangered by ongoing landscape and climatic changes. Although a harmonized classification into vegetation units is necessary for effective habitat conservation, there is cu...

The prevailing paradigm about the Quaternary ecological and evolutionary history of Central European ecosystems is that they were repeatedly impoverished by regional extinctions of most species during the glacial periods, followed by massive recolonizations from southern and eastern refugia during interglacial periods. Recent literature partially c...

Biodiversity monitoring is crucial for ecosystem conservation, but ground data collection is limited by cost, time, and scale. Remote sensing is a convenient approach providing frequent, near-real-time information with fine resolution over wide areas. According to the Spectral Variation Hypothesis (SVH), spectral diversity (SD) is an effective prox...

Observation of high-resolution terrestrial palaeoecological series can decipher relationships between past climatic transitions, their effects on ecosystems and wildfire cyclicity. Here we present a new radiocarbon dated record from Lake Fimon (NE-Italy) covering the 60–27 ka interval. Palynological, charcoal fragments and sediment lithology analys...

Conservation strategies often assume that the total number of species at a specific location can be used as a proxy for other biodiversity dimensions, such as, the presence of rare and threatened species. However, the validity of this assumption remains unclear, particularly at the plot scale. Here, we used~17,000 vegetation plots sampled across th...

Motivation Although dispersal ability is one of the key features determining the spatial dynamics of plant populations and the structure of plant communities, it is also one of the traits for which we still lack data for most species. We compiled a comprehensive dataset of seed dispersal distance classes and predominant dispersal modes for most Eur...

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...

Aims Shallow soils on acidic bedrock in dry areas of Central Europe support dry grasslands and heathlands that were formerly used as extensive pastures. These habitats are of high conservation value, but their abandonment in the 20th century triggered slow natural succession that poses a threat to specialized plant species. We asked how this vegeta...

Question: Temperate grasslands are known for their high plant diversity and distinct seasonality. However, their intra-annual community dynamics are still largely overlooked by ecologists. Therefore, we explored the seasonal alpha- and beta-diversity patterns of vascular plants and their relationships to aboveground biomass in a rocky steppe (Festu...

Human-assisted introduction of alien plants is causing ecosystem transformations worldwide and is considered an important threat to biodiversity. We provide a European assessment of habitat levels of invasion in heathlands and scrub and identify successful alien plants and invasion trends across biogeographical regions. We analysed a geographically...

Ecological theory predicts close relationships between macroclimate and functional traits. Yet, global climatic gradients correlate only weakly with the trait composition of local plant communities, suggesting that important factors have been ignored. Here, we investigate the consistency of climate-trait relationships for plant communities in Europ...

Ecological theory predicts close relationships between macroclimate and functional traits. Yet, global climatic gradients correlate only weakly with the trait composition of local plant communities, suggesting that important factors have been ignored. Here, we investigate the consistency of climate-trait relationships for plant communities in Europ...

Aims Oak–hornbeam forests and related vegetation types (phytosociological order Carpinetalia betuli ) are widespread in temperate western Eurasia. However, their national classification systems are poorly compatible, and a broad‐scale classification based on numerical analyses is lacking. Therefore, we aimed to establish a unified formalized classi...

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...

Aims: To develop a consistent ecological indicator value system for Europe for five of the main plant niche dimensions: soil moisture (M), soil nitrogen (N), soil reaction (R), light (L) and temperature (T). Study area: Europe (and closely adjacent regions). Methods: We identified 31 indicator value systems for vascular plants in Europe that contai...

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...

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...

Plášek, V., Dřevojan, P., Kučera, J. & Chytrý, M. 2022. Three species new to the moss flora of Alaska. – Herzogia 35: 675 – 681. Three moss species – Crossidium squamiferum, Didymodon tectorum and Loeskeobryum brevirostre – have been recorded as new to the Alaskan bryoflora. A brief description of the species and their ecology is given. Plášek, V.,...

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...

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...

History of the Botany Department of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University in Brno in the years 1990–2005.

Alpine ecosystems are hotspots of biodiversity despite their cold climates. Here we investigate spatial patterns in the phylogenetic diversity (i.e. the degree of species relatedness) of European alpine floras and quantify the influence of climatic conditions since the late Pleistocene and historical climatic instability in shaping these patterns....

Biodiversity monitoring is crucial for ecosystem conservation, yet field data collection is limited by costs, time, and extent. Remote sensing represents a convenient approach providing frequent, near-real-time information over wide areas. According to the Spectral Variation Hypothesis (SVH), spectral diversity (SD) is an effective proxy of environ...

Aims We asked how geological substrate affects the distribution of plant species between forest interiors, forest edges, and steppe patches in the forest–steppe landscapes. Specifically, we sought for the presence of the edge effect at the forest–grassland transitions on different substrates. Location Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and...

Global patterns of regional (gamma) plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether these patterns hold for local communities, and the dependence on spatial grain, remain controversial. Using data on 170,272 georeferenced local plant assemblages, we created global maps of alpha diversity (local species richness) for vascular plants at three...

Questions Urbanisation has accelerated the spread of alien and apophytic species around the world including the drylands of continental inland Asia. However, few studies have examined the patterns and drivers of urban plant diversity in this region. We ask how habitat type, city size and macroclimate affect species richness and composition of alien...