Pavel Fibich

• PhD in Botany
• Plant ecologist with spatial focus at University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice

Plants store nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) like starch, fructans and soluble sugars to support metabolism, stress tolerance and defence during low photosynthesis, ultimately influencing their growth and longevity. However, the relationship between NSC composition and growth or persistence in wild plants remains unclear. This study explores tra...

The Himalayas are undergoing significant changes in temperature and moisture availability due to global climate change. Understanding how these changes affect tree growth is critical for conserving and managing this biodiverse region. To investigate the growth-limiting climatic factors, we collected tree-ring data from Abies pindrow old-growth moun...

Understanding mechanisms stabilizing ecosystem functions, such as primary production, is crucial for forecasting global environmental responses. While biological diversity is expected to enhance stability through compensatory reactions to environmental changes, empirical evidence is lacking, especially in old‐growth forests vital for biodiversity c...

How the resource use by consumers vary in different environments and time scales is one of the fundamental ecological questions. Replicated field studies are rare, however; so the extent to which nutrient use varies and why is uncertain. We studied an endangered tyrphobiotic species, the black bog ant (Formica picea), and its feeding preferences in...

Background and Aims Understanding biomass allocation among plant organs is crucial for comprehending plant growth optimization, survival and responses to global change drivers. Yet, mechanisms governing mass allocation in vascular plants from extreme elevations exposed to cold and drought stresses remain poorly understood. Methodology We analyzed...

Temperate forests are undergoing significant transformations due to the influence of climate change, including varying responses of different tree species to increasing temperature and drought severity. To comprehensively understand the full range of growth responses, representative datasets spanning extensive site and climatic gradients are essent...

Conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) is one of the processes that can maintain high species diversity by decreasing population growth rates at high densities, and can thereby favour locally less common species over common ones. But the methods for detection of CNDD can produce false signals, in particular, overestimate CNDD, due to error...

Ongoing climate change can have varying impacts on tree growth within the growing season and across their elevation ranges, with important implications for forest ecosystem functions and services. However, our knowledge of these effects on climate-sensitive Himalayan forests is still limited. Here, we explore the elevational changes in climatic fac...

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...

Increasing tropical cyclone (TC) pressure on temperate forests is inevitable under the recent global increase of the intensity and poleward migration of TCs. However, the long-term effects of TCs on large-scale structure and diversity of temperate forests remain unclear. Here, we aim to ascertain the legacy of TCs on forest structure and tree speci...

Understanding multiple environmental drivers governing tropical organisms' distribution and ecological niches is crucial for predicting their responses to ongoing rapid deforestation. While macroclimatic effects via energy and water availability are well predicted, less is known about locally modulating factors such as canopy structure, light and e...

Invasions of alien plants pose a serious threat to native biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Forests are considered more resistant to invasion due to limited light availability in understories. However, disturbance and abiotic stress may open tree canopies and promote invasion. Their combined effects together with the resistance of resident spec...

Trait-based biodiversity experiments (TBBE) are an important tool to understand the role of plant communities on ecosystem functions and stability. Although, specific care is needed in designing of such experiments. The design should not only aim for maximizing the range of communities´ functional metrics, but also consider natural and random assem...

Biodiversity experiments are a widespread tool to understand key mechanisms on how natural and semi-natural communities respond to climate change and the role of biodiversity on ecosystem functions and stability. More recently, experiments have also taken into account species` functional traits, although specific care is needed in designing trait-b...

Invasive alien species can have severe negative impacts on natural ecosystems. These impacts may be particularly pronounced within ecological communities, where alien species can cause local extinctions. However, it is unclear whether individual alien plant species consistently occur in species-poor or species-rich communities across broad geograph...

Aim Untangling multiple drivers influencing biodiversity along elevation gradients is necessary for predicting the consequences of climate change on mountain communities. We examine the direct and indirect effects of macroclimate, edaphic conditions, fire frequency and putative biotic interactions on species richness and abundance of co‐occurring p...

Species coexistence is a result of biotic interactions, environmental and historical conditions. The Janzen-Connell hypothesis assumes that conspecific negative density dependence (CNDD) is one of the local processes maintaining high species diversity by decreasing population growth rates at high densities. However, the contribution of CNDD to spec...

Tropical forests are notable for their high species diversity, even on small spatial scales, and right-skewed species and size abundance distributions. The role of individual species as drivers of the spatial organization of diversity in these forests has been explained by several hypotheses and processes, for example, stochastic dilution, negative...

While there are numerous studies of diversity patterns both within local communities and at regional scales, the intermediate scale of tens to thousands of km2 is often neglected. Here we present detailed local data on plant communities (using 20×20 m plots) and bird communities (using point counts) for a 50 ha ForestGEO plot in lowland rainforest...

While there are numerous studies of diversity patterns both within local communities and at regional scales, the intermediate scale of tens to thousands of km2 is often neglected. Here we present detailed local data on plant communities (using 20 × 20 m plots) and bird communities (using point counts) for a 50 ha ForestGEO plot in lowland rainfores...

Ants can shape vegetation as seed dispersers and ecosystem engineers. When anthills are long-lasting, they are known to change soil and vegetation characteristics. However, it is unclear whether plant species traits and species composition vary between ant guilds and between parts of individual anthills. We compared different aspects of soil and ve...

Functional trait differences between species are key drivers of community assembly and ecosystem functioning. Quantifying these differences routinely requires using approaches like the Gower distance to combine multiple types of traits into a multi‐trait dissimilarity. Without special care, the Gower distance can however produce a multi‐trait dissi...

In arthropod community ecology, species richness studies tend to be prioritised over those investigating patterns of abundance. Consequently, the biotic and abiotic drivers of arboreal arthropod abundance are still relatively poorly known. In this cross-continental study, we employ a theoretical framework in order to examine patterns of covariance...

Understanding how diversity affects ecosystem stability is crucial for predicting the consequences of continued habitat and biodiversity loss on ecosystem functions and services. Long‐term productivity stability in plant communities is often associated with greater species, phylogenetic or functional diversity, more complex size and age structures,...

Species with vast production of dust‐like windborne seeds, such as orchids, should not be limited by seed dispersal. This paradigm, however, does not fit recent studies showing that many sites suitable for orchids are unoccupied and most seeds land close to their maternal plant. To explore this issue, we studied seed dispersal and gene flow of two...

ζ-Potential (ZP) is among key physical properties characterizing the behavior of nanoparticles in colloidal solutions. Despite many attempts to calculate and neatly interpret the ZP, a full understanding of various factors influencing its values has not been achieved yet, even for standard metal oxides, particularly when considering high ionic conc...

Climbing plants form a substantial component of tropical forest diversity. Climbers are a diverse group comprising various ecological strategies dependent on tree support and are affected by biotic and abiotic forest conditions. In a lowland primary tropical rainforest in Papua New Guinea, we studied the distribution of root climbers from genus Pip...

Traditionally, species absence in a community is ascribed either to dispersal limitation (i.e., the inability of propagules of a species to reach a site) or to habitat limitation (abiotic or biotic conditions of a site prevent species from forming a viable population); sowing experiments can then distinguish between these two mechanisms. In our vie...

We used the newly formed database of phytoplankton samples from the Czech Republic, containing 696 taxa from 662 samples of various types of stagnant waters (fishponds, alluvial backwaters, flooded sand- and gravel pits, lakes in abandoned quarries in former coal mines, reservoirs and others) to test for the relationships between phytoplankton comp...

The growth response of trees to changing climate is frequently discussed as increasing temperatures and more severe droughts become major risks for forest ecosystems. However, the ability of trees to cope with the changing climate and the effects of other environmental factors on climate-growth relationships are still poorly understood. There is th...

Cyanobacterial communities of the splash zone of two Croatian islands, Veruda and Ugljan, were surveyed. At each island, we studied eight localities with different aspects. From all 336 samples, a total of 42 cyanobacterial species, one green alga, and one red alga were found. In both islands Hyella spp. and Gloeocapsopsis crepidinum dominated and...

Linking diversity to biological processes is central for developing informed and effective conservation decisions. Unfortunately, observable patterns provide only a proportion of the information necessary for fully understanding the mechanisms and processes acting upon a particular population or community. Here, we suggest conservation managers uti...

Questions Is the incidence of root hemiparasitic plants in non‐forest vegetation associated with high diversity? Are root hemiparasites more associated with species‐rich vegetation than other species? Location Czech Republic. Methods Plot size‐corrected species richness, Shannon diversity and Pielou's evenness were computed for a representative s...

Appendix S1. Separate analyses from different regions. Table S1. Summary of dark diversity size estimates (ln transformed) from species co‐occurrence (SCO) and species distribution modelling (SDM) methods, relationship between dark diversity estimates (Type II regression slope having SCO on x axis and SDM on y axis with 95 CI in parentheses, and R...

Large-scale biodiversity studies can be more informative if observed diversity in a study site is accompanied by dark diversity, the set of absent although ecologically suitable species. Dark diversity methodology is still being developed and a comparison of different approaches is needed. We used plant data at two different scales (European and se...

Ecological theory and biodiversity conservation have traditionally relied on the number of species recorded at a site, but it is agreed that site richness represents only a portion of the species that can inhabit particular ecological conditions, that is, the habitat-specific species pool. Knowledge of the species pool at different sites enables me...

Table S1. Locations of the six areas for the test communities and the representation of the vegetation types considered. Table S2. Variables used in the species distribution models with Biomod.

Questions How do spatial patterns of tree distribution and species co‐occurrence differ between primary and secondary tropical rain forests? What signatures of ecological processes might be discerned by comparing the spatial patterns of trees between primary and secondary forest plots? Location Tropical rain forest vegetation, lowlands of Papua Ne...

Biotopy a ekologické niky kořenových poloparazitů: zhodnocení na základě velké fytocenologické databáze

The relationship between diversity and ecosystem functioning is often studied by biodiversity experiments. Traditionally, the mechanisms behind biodiversity effects observed in these experiments have been evaluated by relative yield, overyielding and Loreau and Hector's additive partitioning of net biodiversity effect, and more recently by linear-m...

Tropical canopies are known for their high abundance and diversity of ants. However, the factors which enable coexistence of so many species in trees, and in particular, the role of foragers in determining local diversity, are not well understood. We censused nesting and foraging arboreal ant communities in two 0.32 ha plots of primary and secondar...

When plant monocultures are sown over a wide range of densities for a given period of time, the total biomass yield increases with density at low densities and then levels off at high densities, a phenomenon called constant final yield (CFY). There are several reported cases, however, where the total yield decreases at very high densities, but the...

Aims We tested for the effect of final sowing plant density (i.e. density of established seedlings) on the values of biodiversity effects [transgressive overyielding, net effect, complementarity effect (CE) and selection effect (SE), trait-dependent complementarity and dominance effect] in a glasshouse pot experiment. Methods We conducted a single...

Questions What is the spatio‐temporal dynamics of recruit (seedlings and vegetative sprouts) establishment in meadow gaps? What processes prevail during recruit establishment? At what spatio‐temporal scales do they operate? Location A wet meadow in S outh B ohemia, a region of the C zech R epublic. Methods We studied spatio‐temporal dynamics in p...

It is believed that diversity of plant communities has a positive effect on their productivity. The benefits of diversity are described by “biodiversity indices”, comparing yield of mixtures with yields of monocultures of constituent species. These indices are supposed to capture also the main mechanisms leading to increased yield. We have construc...

Root hemiparasitic plants interact with their host plants through parasitism and competition. The interactions can be divided into aboveground and belowground interactions. Because both groups of plants are autotrophic, they compete for light aboveground. Belowground interactions are more complex. The host plants compete for resources in the soil a...

An extension of Graham's classification of scheduling prob-lems is proposed to cover Grid Scheduling Problems (GSP). The GSP consists of heterogeneous resources in distributed structures (queues), various jobs, and optimality criteria. We will discuss the characteristics (fault tolerance, competitive behavior) of this model and the hierarchies appl...