Zdeňka Lososová

Masaryk University | MUNI · Department of Botany and Zoology

1. Ecological differences between coexisting species within plant communities can be assessed by considering functional and phylogenetic dissimilarities either separately or in a complementary way. Here, we studied (a) the potential overlap between functional (FD) and phylogenetic diversities (PD) and (b) their combined and unique roles in explaini...

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...

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...

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...

1. With the potential extinction of threatened species, communities and species pools could become functionally and phylogenetically impoverished, especially if threatened species had distinct traits and evolutionary histories compared to least concern species. Alternatively, threatened species would have similar traits and evolutionary histories,...

Aims Arable habitats (i.e. fields, orchards, vineyards, and their fallows) were created by humans and have been essential elements in Central European landscapes for several millennia. In recent decades, these habitats have been drastically altered by changes in land use as well as agricultural practices and, more recently, by climate change. These...

It is increasingly recognized that the factors facilitating plant invasions depend on the stage along the introduction–naturalization–invasion continuum. Adaptative strategies, that is, combinations of functional traits that represent overall fitness in the face of one or more selection pressures, have shown promise in explaining plant invasions. H...

1. Niche filtering predicts that abundant species in communities have similar traits that are suitable for the environment. However, niche filtering can operate on distinct axes of trait variation in response to different ecological conditions. Here, we use a trait-based approach to infer niche filtering processes and (1) test if abundant and rare...

Aim The first comprehensive checklist of European phytosociological alliances, orders and classes (EuroVegChecklist) was published by Mucina et al. (2016, Applied Vegetation Science , 19 (Suppl. 1), 3–264). However, this checklist did not contain detailed information on the distribution of individual vegetation types. Here we provide the first maps...

Questions Two scientific disciplines, vegetation science and weed science, study arable weed vegetation, which has seen a strong diversity decrease in Europe over the last decades. We compared two collections of plot‐based vegetation records originating from these two disciplines. The aim was to check the suitability of the collections for joint an...

Plant mycorrhizal status (a trait indicating the ability to form mycorrhizas) can be a useful plant trait for predicting changes in vegetation influenced by increased fertility. Mycorrhizal fungi enhance nutrient uptake and are expected to provide a competitive advantage for plants growing in nutrient-poor soils; while in nutrient-rich soils, mycor...

Aim Many plant species native to Europe have naturalized worldwide. We tested whether the phylogenetic structure of the species pools of European habitats is related to the proportion of species from each habitat that has naturalized outside Europe (habitat’s donor role) and whether the donated species are more phylogenetically related to each othe...

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...

Whether cities are more or less diverse than surrounding environments, and the extent to which non-native species in cities impact regional species pools, remain two fundamental yet unanswered questions in urban ecology. Here we offer a unifying framework for understanding the mechanisms that generate biodiversity patterns across taxonomic groups a...

Cultivated exotic plants are often introduced for their aesthetic value and today comprise a substantial fraction of the flora of urban domestic gardens. Yet, their relative contribution to the functional diversity of domestic gardens and how it changes across different climate zones is insufficiently understood. Here, we investigated whether the e...

Aims Biodiversity is traditionally studied mostly at the species level, but biogeographical and macroecological studies at higher taxonomic levels can provide valuable insights into the evolutionary processes at large spatial scales. Our aim was to assess the representation of vascular plant families within different vegetation formations across Eu...

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...

Aims (a) To determine the contribution of current macro‐environmental factors in explaining the phylogenetic structure of European forest vegetation, (b) to map and describe spatial patterns in their phylogenetic structure and (c) to examine which lineages are the most important contributors to phylogenetic clustering and whether their contribution...

Aims The effect of biogeographical processes on the spatial turnover component of beta‐diversity over large spatial extents remains scarcely understood. Here, we aim at disentangling the roles of environmental and historical factors on plant taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover, while controlling for the effects of species richness and rarity. Loca...

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...

Question Habitat‐specific species pools are shaped by ecological and evolutionary processes such as speciation, extinction, and migration. However, their role is poorly known because of the lack of robust data on species pools across a large number of plant community types and large areas. Here, we analyse a unique dataset of species pools of diagn...

Kalusová, V., Chytrý, M., Padullés, J.C., Dawson, W., Essl, F., Fristoe, T., van Kleunen, M., Kreft, H., Mucina, L., Pergl, J., Pyšek, P., Weigelt, P., Winter, M. & Lososová, Z. 2020. Phylogenetic relatedness of alien plants depends on their donor habitats. 11th International Conference on Biological Invasions: The Human Role in Biological Invasion...

This report presents the European Weed Vegetation Database, a new database of vegetation plots documenting short-lived vegetation of arable and ruderal habitats from Europe and Macaronesia. The database comprises the phytosociological classes Papaveretea rhoeadis, Sisymbrietea, Chenopodietea and Digitario sanguinalis-Era-grostietea minoris. It is a...

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...

Classification of arable weed and annual ruderal vegetation according to phytosociological school of Braun Blanquet has been changing from its beginnings in the late 1920s. Using vegetation plot data with a complete list of species and their abundances, several hierarchical classification systems were proposed, influenced by the geographical region...

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...

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...

Aims: We present the results of a phytosociological investigation of segetal plant communities colonizing winter arable fields, olive groves, and vineyards in selected traditional agricultural areas of central Italy. Some of these communities have great environmental and cultural value and are threatened by changes in agriculture. Given the lack of...

The search for traits associated with plant invasiveness has yielded contradictory results, in part because most previous studies have failed to recognize that different traits are important at different stages along the introduction–naturalization–invasion continuum. Here we show that across six different habitat types in temperate Central Europe,...

1.The species richness–productivity relationship is one of the most debated patterns in ecology. Species coexistence theory suggests that it could be tightly linked to the type of nutrient limitation (NL: no limitation, single‐nutrient limitation, co‐limitation by several nutrients). Yet effects of NL on the species richness–productivity relationsh...

Plant invasions can drastically change the structure of native communities, but it is not fully understood whether alien species occupy phylogenetic and functional space within the range occupied by natives, or provide a novel set of evolutionary origins and traits to the invaded communities. Here, we evaluated this open question with data on a lar...

Aim Urban floras are composed of species of different origin, both native and alien, and with various traits and niches. It is likely that these species will respond to the ongoing climate change in different ways, resulting in future species compositions with no analogues in current European cities. Our goal was to estimate potential shifts in pla...

Functional traits and phylogeny offer different, and often complementary, information about ecological differences between species, an essential step to uncover biodiversity assembly mechanisms and their feedbacks to ecosystem functions. However, traits and phylogeny are often related due to underlying trait evolution. Consequently, when combined,...

Human made habitats are considered to be important hotspots of biodiversity of native as well as alien plant species. Due to high propagule pressure caused by human activities they serve as a source of introduction of alien plant species. We used the database of planted ornamental trees and shrubs for Brno, Czech Republic, to determine the signific...

In this study, we explored trait differences among native, naturalized and invasive species in a range of habitat types. We asked whether the naturalized and invasive species are different from the native species if their traits are considered (i) separately and (ii) together in multivariate trait space. To answer these questions, we used 24,935 ve...

Urbanized areas with high habitat heterogeneity and intense human impact form unique environment which is surprisingly rich in plant species. We explore the effect of the settlement size on plant species richness, composition and temperature requirements of plant communities. We studied three habitats with different disturbance regime in 45 Central...

Plants in cities must cope with various anthropogenic environments that differ from surrounding landscapes. Moreover, the differences in biotic and abiotic conditions among these habitats filter species with suitable traits and niche requirements. Here we aim to identify those attributes that promote species occurrence across and within urban habit...

The importance of macroclimate and dispersal limitation in the broad-scale variation of European urban land snail assemblages is likely to differ between native and non-native species because of the southern origin of many non-native snails, often spread by humans. We sampled land snails in each of 32 European cities and compiled from the literatur...

Aims: Synanthropic vegetation (vegetation of man-made and heavily disturbed habitats) is very diverse, and besides important ecological aspects, it also reflects historical, cultural, economic drivers shaping the current face of European vegetation. Due to its omnipresence across Europe and intensive research in the past, many data sets on synanthr...

This report presents the European Weed Vegetation Database, a new database of vegetation plots documenting short-lived vegetation of arable and ruderal habitats from Europe and Macaronesia. The database comprises the phytosociological classes Papaveretea rhoeadis, Sisymbrietea, Chenopodietea and Digitario sanguinalis-Era-grostietea minoris. It is a...

Several hypotheses postulate that species invasion is affected by an interplay between the phylogenetic position of the invading species and the phylogenetic structure of the invaded community type. Some of them suggest that phylogenetic relatedness of invaders to native species promotes naturalization, because phylogenetically related alien specie...

QuestionPatterns of phylogenetic relatedness of species within community types (phylogenetic structure; PS) are often used to infer processes of community assembly, yet the causes of these patterns remain poorly understood. Here we ask whether PS of extant plant species pools is related to availability of correspoding habitats in the geological his...

Urban habitats differ in their disturbance regimes, which act as an environmental filter determining plant community species composition. This is why plant communities in different urban habitats provide a suitable model for studying the effects of disturbance on phylogenetic diversity. We explore how phylogenetic diversity varies across urban plan...

There are changes in the realized niches of species along environmental gradients, especially at the edge of their distribution where they become more specialized. A classical case is weeds of the Caucalidion alliance that spread with agriculture from the Fertile Crescent and thrive in a wide range of climates that differ from that prevailing in th...

The effects of non-native species invasions on community diversity and biotic homogenization have been described for various taxa in urban environments, but not for land snails. Here we relate the diversity of native and non-native land-snail urban faunas to urban habitat types and macroclimate, and analyse homogenization effects of non-native spec...

List of native and alien species recorded in 32 Central European cities; numbers of plots and cities with the species presence are given. (PDF)

Using recent data on wetland flora, vegetation, soil seed bank and seed dispersal from various parts of the Czech Republic, we compared the distribution and ecology of two wetland annuals, the native and threatened Lindernia procumbens (KOCKER) PHILCOX and the alien L. dubia (L.) PENNELL. While L. procumbens was documented from 16 localities in the...

Tillaea aquatica (Crassulaceae) is considered as annual wetland species threatened by changes in land use and progressing eutrophication in large part of its European distribution range. We summarised the historical and recent data on this species, and analysed its distribution and associated habitat changes in the Czech Republic. We used permanent...

Aim To determine relative effects of habitat type, climate and spatial pattern on species richness and composition of native and alien plant assemblages in central European cities. Location Central Europe, Belgium and the Netherlands. Methods The diversity of native and alien flora was analysed in 32 cities. In each city, plant species were recorde...

A synthesis of the alliance Eragrostion cilianensi-minoris in the Czech Republic is presented on the basis of 82 relevés including new unpublished data. A TWINSPAN classification and detrended correspondence analysis were used to identify the main vegetation types included in the alliance Eragrostion cilianensi-minoris. A syntaxonomic revision of t...

Aim In contrast to non-forest vegetation, the species richness–productivity (SR-P) relationship in forests still remains insufficiently explored. Several studies have focused on the diversity of the tree layer, but the species richness of temperate deciduous forests is mainly determined by their species-rich herb layer. The factors controlling herb...