Róbert Gallé

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Centre for Ecological Research

The linyphid genus Panamomops Simon, 1884 is complemented with a new Central-European species. Here we illustrate and describe, Panamomops szinetari sp. n. (male and female) from dry grassland vegetation in eastern Hungary. Comparative photographs and drawings of the new species, and the dentition of the chelicera and a detailed description of habi...

Context Land-use intensification to increase yields is often detrimental to biodiversity undermining the provision of ecosystem services. However, it is questionable if ecosystem service providers contribute to ecological intensification by achieving the same or higher yields than conventional high-intensity agriculture. Objectives In this study,...

Habitat fragmentation has far-reaching negative impacts on the environment, resulting in biodiversity loss, soil quality degradation and alteration of water availability. In addition, fragmentation can disrupt ecological processes, potentially facilitating the establishment and spread of invasive plants, which can further harm native arthropod comm...

A kaszálás az egyik legelterjedtebb gyepkezelési módszer Európában, mely megfelelően végezve alkalmas számos gyeptípus magas diverzitásának megőrzésére. A nagy területeken, rövid idő alatt végzett kaszálás az ízeltlábúak jelentős direkt mortalitását okozza, emellett csökkenti a gyep mikrohabitat-diverzitását, homogenizálja a mikroklimatikus viszony...

Land‐use intensification is often associated with a decline in functional diversity, potentially undermining the provision of ecosystem services. However, how changes in traits affect ecosystem processes remains poorly understood. Variation in trait values among species in a community may drive ecosystem processes. Alternatively, the mass ratio hyp...

The species Xysticus lendli is known only from its original description of a single male and one doubtful record so far. Here, we illustrate and redescribe the species based on 34 specimens in total and describe its female for the first time. We illustrated the male palp via compound micrographs and scanning electron micrographs. We generated a DNA...

Floodplain forests are among the most endangered ecosystems worldwide, even though they are hotspots for numerous taxa. The abandonment of traditional management and large‐scale timber extraction, such as clear‐cutting, has led to a decline in floodplain forest biodiversity. Retention forestry has the potential to facilitate the implementation of a...

Vast grassland areas disappear due to abandonment, conversion to arable fields or urban areas. Consequently, grassland species have declined dramatically during and since the last century. The majority of remaining European grasslands are managed, many of them by mowing, which, in general, decreases arthropods' abundance and species richness. Here,...

Civilizations, including ancient ones, have shaped global ecosystems in many ways through coevolution of landscapes and humans. However, the cultural legacies of ancient and lost civilizations are rarely considered in the conservation of the Eurasian steppe biome. We used a data set containing more than 1000 records on localities, land cover, prote...

Renewable energy production is gaining momentum globally as a way to combat climate change without drastically reducing human energy consumption. Solar energy offers the fastest developing solution. However, ground-mounted solar panels have a high land requirement, which leads to conflicts with other land use types, particularly agriculture and bio...

Plant invasion and habitat fragmentation have a detrimental effect on biodiversity in nearly all types of ecosystems. We compared the direct and indirect effects of the invasion of the common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) on biodiversity patterns in different-sized Hungarian forest-steppe fragments. We assessed vegetation structure, measured tempera...

1. Grassland ecosystems undergo dramatic habitat loss and fragmentation worldwide due to agricultural expansion and intensification. Among different taxonomic groups, grassland arthropods are particularly sensitive to this process and, therefore , are exposed to considerable risk. 2. Although many studies focus on land use impacts on arthropod dive...

The gnaphosid spider genus Sernokorba Kamura, 1992 is reviewed. While Sernokorba pallidipatellis (Bösenberg and Strand 1906) and Sernokorba fanjing Song, Zhu & Zhang, 2004, occur in the Far East and the Japanese archipelago, Sernokorba tescorum (Simon, 1914) is known from Europe. We here describe a fourth species, Sernokorba betyar sp. nov. (male a...

Introduction Land use changes have seriously fragmented grasslands leading to extensive biodiversity loss worldwide. Habitat fragmentation affects grasslands at both local and landscape scales, adversely affecting the probability of species colonisation and extinction. In our study, we addressed the effects of fragment size and landscape-scale habi...

CONTEXT: Agricultural intensification contributes to global food security and well-being by supplying the food demand of a growing human population. However, ongoing land-use change and intensification seriously affect the abundance, diversity and distribution of species, besides many other impacts, thereby threatening the functioning of ecosystems...

A mosaic of patches in various successional stages is key to maintaining high biodiversity in open temperate woodlands. The abandonment of traditional management, such as once widespread coppicing, has caused biodiversity loss and a shift to ecologically homogeneous communities. Invertebrates are one of the taxonomic groups that suffered the most f...

Despite the important ecological role of forest-steppes in nature conservation, information on the contribution of individual components to arthropod conservation is scarce. Furthermore, the effect of landscape structure on the arthropod composition of a natural mosaic of habitats has been largely understudied. We investigated the effects of habita...

The heterogeneity of microhabitats is an important driver of biodiversity. Therefore, conserving habitat heterogeneity at multiple spatial scales is essential to biodiversity conservation. This study investigates the effect and the conservation value of micromosaic heterogeneity provided by the heather (Calluna vulgaris) patches in an Eastern-Europ...

There is widespread evidence for a worldwide trend of insect decline, but we have much fewer data about recent temporal trends in other arthropod groups, including spiders. Spiders can be hypothesised to similarly decline because of trophic dependence on insects and being equally sensitive to local and global environmental changes. Background trend...

Ecological intensification is expected to favour biodiversity, which is in turn expected to benefit ecosystem services. However, recent meta-analyses revealed mixed results regarding relationships between land use, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. Information on the trait composition of biological communities can improve our ability to explain...

Livestock grazing is one of the most common management practices for grasslands and can greatly affect their biodiversity. However, arthropod diversity response patterns to grazing regimes are difficult to predict. We conducted a short-term grazing exclusion experiment in traditionally managed alkali grasslands in Hungary to investigate differences...

Ample evidence suggests positive effects of species diversity on ecosystem functioning and services in natural and agricultural landscapes. Less obvious and even contested are the effects of such diversity on human well‐being. This state of art partly stems from methodological difficulties to evaluate and quantify these effects and imprecise concep...

In agricultural landscapes, arable plants are negatively affected by management intensification. These species can fulfill various ecosystem functions, such as biological pest control, by supporting predators. The ecosystem functions of common plant species are widely known. By contrast, the contribution of rare arable plants (RAPs) to biocontrol i...

Soil invertebrates have an essential role in decomposition, nutrient turnover and soil structure formation, all of which are strongly threatened by urbanization. Sealing, compaction by trampling and pollution destroy and degrade city soils and potentially damage soil-living invertebrates. The existing literature on how urbanization affects soil inv...

As a consequence of agricultural intensification and habitat fragmentation since the mid-20th century, biological diversity has declined considerably throughout the world, particularly in Europe. We assessed how habitat and landscape-scale heterogeneity, such as variation in fragment size (small vs. large) and landscape configuration (measured as c...

Civilisations including ancient ones, have shaped the global ecosystems in many ways through a co-evolution of landscapes and humans. However, the cultural legacies of ancient and lost civilisations are seldom considered in conservation. Here using a continental-scale dataset containing over 1,000 data records on the localities, land cover, protect...

The habitat and occurrence of farmland birds are strongly determined by the agricultural-landscape structure. Changes in land cover composition and configuration are one of the main causes of the significant decline in abundance of the Eurasian skylark (Alauda arvensis) in recent decades. This farmland-bird species is common in agricultural areas o...

Species can survive periods of unfavorable conditions in small areas that are protected from climate-related disturbances, such as increasing temperature and severe drought. These areas are known as “microrefugia” and are increasingly recognized by conservationists. Although some studies suggest that the in situ survival of invertebrate species may...

Alteration of agricultural land use has led to a widespread loss of biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes. Degradation and gradual disappearance of natural and semi-natural habitats has become a global conservation problem. Together, intensive agriculture and the abandonment of extensively farmed areas endanger the wildlife of European landsca...

Abstract Disentangling the effects of different landscape and local attributes on the biota of habitat patches is often challenging. In Central European forest‐steppe ecosystems the high number of forest fragments and the relatively homogenous matrix between them offer the opportunity to disentangle the effects of habitat size and landscape structu...

Az EU Biodiverzitás Stratégiájában szereplő zöldinfrastruktúra koncepció szerint a biodiverzitás megőrzése úgy biztosítható, ha a természetközeli élőhelyek és az egyéb, ökológiai funkciót betöltő, de nem természetközeli tájalkotó elemek (pl. telepített fasorok, gyepes mezsgyék) működő, azaz az élővilág számára átjárható élőhelyhálózattá kapcsolódna...

The quality of the surrounding landscape matrix often determines the biodiversity pattern of the remaining natural habitat fragments. Dispersal of organisms depends mostly on species traits related to mobility and the contrast between the habitat fragment and the matrix. Therefore, variation in species composition among fragments, i.e. beta-diversi...

Increased habitat fragmentation in natural areas is one of the causes of declining insect diversity and biomass globally. Wild bees and wasps and their ecosystem functions are not exceptions of the trend. To stop this trend, we need to increase our understanding of interactions between functional traits and the environment for better informing cons...

Drainage canals are widespread components of agricultural landscapes. Although canals have greatly contributed to biodiversity loss by desiccating wetlands, they have recently attracted conservation attention due to their potential to function as refugia for native species in intensively managed landscapes. However, their conservation role in compl...

Agricultural intensification has led to dramatic losses of species and associated ecosystem services. In the European Union, agri‐environment schemes (AESs) have been developed to mitigate these challenges. There are two opposing AES strategies, targeting either production or non‐production areas. Organic farming focuses on production and conservat...

Urbanization is one of the most intensive forms of landscape and habitat transformation, resulting in species loss, and taxonomic and functional homogenization of different communities. Whilst green infrastructure (the network of natural and semi-natural areas in cities) has been studied extensively in terms of specific features that promote biodiv...

Habitat fragmentation is considered one of the most severe threatening factors for global biodiversity. Here we assessed, how local and landscape scale environmental variables, such as fragment size (small vs. large) and landscape configuration (measured as connectivity index) relates to bird community composition, species richness, abundance and f...

Increased farming intensity led to massive declines across multiple farmland taxa. In Europe, measures introduced to counteract these losses include those considered agronomically productive, such as organic farming, as well as those that support no direct production of crops, such as non‐crop flowering fields in conventional farming systems. We st...

Peat bogs are among the most threatened habitats in Central Europe. They are characterized by stagnant water with low pH and lower nutrient content compared to the surrounding habitats. The flora and fauna of peat bogs comprised of many habitat specialist and rare species. We explored the differences in spider fauna of European spruce and Scots pin...

Habitat fragmentation threatens terrestrial arthropod biodiversity, and thereby also leads to alterations of ecosystem functioning and stability. Predation on insects and seeds by arthropods are two very important ecological functions because of their community-structuring effects. We addressed the effect of fragment connectivity, fragment size, an...

Agri-environment scheme (AES) approaches can be classified according to whether they prescribe management in non-productive areas, such as field boundaries and wildflower strips, or in productive areas, such as arable crops. Here we tested the ecological effectiveness of two popular AESs in Germany: wildflower strips next to winter wheat fields as...

Burrow-dwelling rodents are often considered ecosystem engineer species in arid environments. They create distinct habitat patches by building burrows: they move large amounts of soil, mix soil layers and change soil properties locally. Our aim was to explore the role of Steppe Marmot as an ecosystem engineer in shaping the plant species compositio...

European nature conservation has a strong focus on farmland harbouring threatened species that mainly co-occur with traditional agriculture shaped way before the green revolution. Increased land-use intensity in agriculture has caused an alarming decline in farmland biodiversity during the last century. How can a landscape perspective contribute to...

Drainage canals are ubiquitous components of agricultural landscapes worldwide. Although canals have greatly contributed to biodiversity loss by desiccating wetlands, they have recently attracted conservation attention due to their potential to function as refugia for native wetland-dependent species in intensively managed landscapes. However, thei...

Plantations of non-native trees for commercial use are common practice in Europe. They are known to have severe ecological impacts on arthropod fauna by altering microclimatic conditions and reducing microhabitat diversity. However, the effect of plantation tree species on winter-active fauna is relatively unknown. Spiders are a diverse predatory a...

Semi-natural linear landscape elements such as road verges, hedgerows and field margins are important in maintaining the connectivity between habitat fragments of highly modified landscapes. Preservation of habitat specialist fauna requires conservation of the remaining natural habitat patches and connectivity of fragments. Our study focuses on the...

The main aims of this study were to identify the land cover preferences of a farmland bird species, the Eurasian Skylark (Alauda arvensis) in Hungary and investigate the link between the recent trend of the abundance of this species and the land-cover change. Our analysis was based on the Hungarian common bird monitoring database and the Corine Lan...

The European avifauna on agricultural land has been permanently diminished over the past few decades. This phenomenon is clearly connected with agricultural intensification and the recent land cover changes. The main aims of this study were to identify the land cover preferences of a farmland bird species, the Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis in Hu...

Peat bogs are highly endangered and very sensitive habitats in Central Europe. Their high water table, acidity and characteristic climate determine their specialized flora and fauna with numerous rare species. Peat bogs are threatened by soil erosion and nutrient infiltration due to forestry management or grazing. Several small, natural peat bogs e...

• Non‐native tree plantations constitute a large part of forestation worldwide. Plantations are prone to invasion by exotic herbaceous plant species due to habitat properties, including understory vegetation structure. • We established 40 sampling sites in 10 plantation forests. Sites were selected according to tree species (native poplar forests a...

Grazing and mowing are widely applied management practices in semi-natural grasslands, which are one of the most important habitats for biodiversity conservation in Europe. Due to the decline in extensively grazing livestock numbers, an increasing area of formerly grazed grasslands has being used as mown grasslands. However, we have scarce informat...

Background: The effects of trees on understorey communities is a major driver of vegetation composition. However, we have little understanding on how isolated forest patches of the forest-steppe transition affect their herb layer as compared to adjacent grasslands. Aims: Our aim was to test whether trees had a protective effect on understorey herba...

Agricultural management intensity and landscape heterogeneity act as the main drivers of biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes while also determining ecosystem services. The trait‐based functional diversity approach offers a way to assess changes in community functionality across agroecosystems. We focused on carabids and spiders, because th...

Context Intensive agricultural management practices and landscape homogenisation are the main drivers of biodiversity loss in agricultural landscapes. Agricultural fields are regularly disturbed and provide unstable habitats due to crop management regimes. This may lead to movement of arthropods into neighbouring non-arable habitats, as natural and...

Spiders in native forests were smaller than spiders of exotic forests, but during winter, spiders in native forests grew more than spiders in exotic forests. Season has an effect on cursorial locomotion, but moving may increase the risk of predation. Spiders collected in spring had more fat than autumn spiders, emphasising the major role of winter...

Forest steppes of the Kiskunság region in Hungary are characterized by dry, sandy grasslands and forest patches with relatively open canopy and small diameter (10–100 m). As their significant area was converted to commercial plantation forests, the remaining sandy grasslands and forest steppe patches are mostly isolated from each other. Secondary l...

Overwintering in temperate regions is a prominent mortality risk for invertebrates and may affect their behaviour and body condition. Pardosa alacris is a common ground dwelling spider in central European native and plantation forests, and habitat type and prey availability may play important roles in their overwintering. The effect of overwinterin...

The Palearctic forest-steppe biome is a narrow vegetation zone between the temperate forest and steppe biomes, which provides important habitats for many endangered species and represents an important hotspot of biodiversity. Although the number of studies on forest–grassland mosaics is increasing, information currently available about the general...

Spillover between agricultural land and natural habitats is recognised as an important mechanism shaping biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Its spatio-temporal patterns and magnitude are thoroughly described in the literature and it is often stated that spillover should be considered in conservation planning. In fact studies that implement and t...

The majority of natural forest steppes in Central-Europe were converted to forest plantations, a significant part of plantations are composed of exotic pine trees. This brings dramatic changes in habitat structure. The formerly open-canopy forest patches and grasslands became closed-canopy forests and key habitat factors were altered, such as micro...

Background: Burial mounds (kurgans) of Eurasian steppes are man-made habitat islands that have the potential to harbour rich plant diversity due to micro-habitats associated with their topography. Aims: We assessed whether kurgan micro-habitats harboured different species pools and functional groups from those found on the surrounding steppes. In a...

Pitfall traps are widely used for sampling ground-dwelling arthropods. Their sampling efficiency is affected by several factors, e.g. material, size and modification of parts of the trap and sampling design. Pitfall trap sampling is also affected by the accumulation of plant litter in the traps, rain fall and by-catches of small vertebrates, which...

Secondary habitats are important in biodiversity conservation: a case study on orthopterans along ditch banks. It has been shown that native biota can survive in secondary habitats such as road verges, dikes and hedges. We aimed to assess the conservation value of ditch banks for orthopterans in an agricultural landscape in Hungary, based on the an...

Pollinators are sensitive to agricultural intensification at both local and landscape scales. High configurational landscape heterogeneity due to small fields and a high amount of field boundaries is hypothesized to enhance farmland biodiversity. Here, we investigated the effects of organic vs. conventional farming in large-vs. small-scale agricult...

Rangelands with scattered trees are complex and dynamic systems with a long history in Europe. Generally referred to as “wood-pastures,” they are considered to have outstanding conservation value. Thorny shrubs are important for supporting the biodiversity of these wooded rangelands, as well as facilitating the regeneration of trees by acting as nu...

The integration of food production and biodiversity conservation represents a key challenge for sustainability. Several studies suggest that even small structural elements in the landscape can make a substantial contribution to the overall biodiversity value of the agricultural landscapes. Pastures can have high biodiversity potential. However, the...

List of collected species spider species and number of individuals collected in the wood-pasture with and without arboreal and shrub vegetation in Transylvania in May and June 2015. Significant indicator values (IndVal, Dufrêne & Legendre, 1997) are indicated with stars (p<0.05). (DOCX)

The map of the studied pasture with the four habitat types sampled. The physiognomy of the pasture and typical pictures representing the sampled habitats are also shown. (TIF)

Agricultural intensification drives biodiversity loss and shapes farmers’ profit, but the role of legacy effects and detailed quantification of ecological–economic trade-offs are largely unknown. In Europe during the 1950s, the Eastern communist bloc switched to large-scale farming by forced collectivization of small farms, while the West kept smal...

Eastern European grasslands are still inhabited by a rich arthropod fauna, but the drivers and mechanisms influencing their communities have to be understood to ensure their future survival. Heteroptera communities were studied in 20 plot-pairs in Pannonic salt steppe–salt marsh mosaics in Hungary. The effects of vegetation characteristics, landsca...

Peatlands cover cca 3% of the planet‘s surface, yet have disproportional role in carbon stocking. Our goal is to understand the world peatland degradation and it’s possible CO2 emissions for two time periods: 2025 and 2050. First we modeled the future degradation of peatlands and the associated carbon emissions. Second, a conceptual representation...

Plantation forests comprise an important part of the forested areas in European countries. Intensive forestry management and short-rotation cycles of plantation forests reduce habitat diversity and change the composition of invertebrate assemblages, mainly by reducing the number of habitat specialist species. Here, we analysed the effect of vegetat...

Plants have divergent defense mechanisms against the harmful effects of heavy metals present in excess in soils and groundwaters. Poplars (Populus spp.) are widely cultivated because of their rapid growth and high biomass production, and members of the genus are increasingly used as experimental model organisms of trees and for phytoremediation pur...

Significant proportion of crop lands have been abandoned as management strategies have changed in Central and Eastern Europe in the past decades. The study of insect versus plant communities on such areas could help us understand how these processes take place, and whether these communities return to a close-to-natural state. Amongst insects ants,...

Intensive management causes significant changes to the habitat structure of forest stands and threatens forest specialist insect species. To assess and counteract the effect of periodic intensive forestry interventions, such as clear‐cutting and reforestation, it is important to adequately quantify the recovery rate and composition of the native bi...

Traditional rural social–ecological systems (SES) share many features which are crucial for sustainable development. Eastern European countries such as Romania, are still rich in traditional cultural landscapes. However, these landscapes are increasingly under internal (e.g., people's aspirations toward western socioeconomic ideals) and external (i...

Lowland rivers and their floodplains have changed markedly over the last centuries. River dikes have become among the most extensive secondary habitats of former floodplains. Our main question was, what role do secondary habitats on river dikes play in harbouring plant species and maintaining plant diversity of lowland landscapes dominated by agric...

Floodplain forests are among the most threatened habitats in Europe and contain a highly diverse and characteristic fauna. We tested the effect of landscape and habitat attributes on the structure of spider assemblages of river islands and floodplain forests along the Mures River, Western Romania. The fieldwork was carried out in seven islands and...

The management of natural and seminatural systems often leads to disturbance associated with the appearance of non-native species. The spread of these species is increasing due to global environmental changes combined with local management interventions. These non-native species may establish self-sustaining populations influencing ecosystem functi...

Steppes used to cover large areas of Hungary, but most of this vegetation has since been destroyed. In Central Hungary, some patches have survived on ridges in wet meadows. These habitat complexes face profound land use changes and their optimal management regime is uncertain. We identified seven annually mown steppe and wet meadow types according...

Habitat edges are regarded as important components of heterogeneous landscapes. Diverse theories exist about the diversity and functional role of edges, and no generalisation have been possible so far, thus case studies are important for better understanding the landscape scale processes. Forest management highly modified the structure and tree spe...

For adequate conservation planning, ecologists need to understand the driving factors of the species richness and composition patterns of arthropod assemblages. The present study scrutinizes how the vegetation, the surrounding matrix and the process of fragmentation affects the diversity and the composition of arthropod assemblages in dune slack me...

Forest management has highly modified the structure of the European forests. Harvesting and post-harvest regeneration leads to a simplified forest structure. Our main objective was to detect the effects of habitat structure and forest age on the ground-dwelling spider diversity and assemblage composition of poplar forests at the Hungarian Great Pla...