Zuzana Plesková

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• Master of Science
• Researcher at Masaryk University

We describe the vegetation of small-sized non-forest wetlands in the forests of Bystrá dolina, located in the western part of the Pilsko massif in the Orava region of northern Slovakia. The sites are situated between 1126 and 1293 meters a. s. l. In the vicinity of active springs or streams, a spring habitat of national interest has been inhabited...

Mitigating the effects of global change on biodiversity requires its understanding in the past. The main proxy of plant diversity, fossil pollen record, has a complex relationship to surrounding vegetation and unknown spatial scale. We explored both using modern pollen spectra in species-rich and species-poor regions in temperate Central Europe. We...

An undesired succession of rich fens leads to the formation of dense Sphagnum carpets that outcompete brown mosses and some vascular plants, resulting in biodiversity loss in fen habitats of high conservation importance. Small‐scale Sphagnum removal is a rarely implemented conservational measure, whose success may depend on soil alkalinity and fert...

Aims Classification of European bog vegetation ( Oxycocco‐Sphagnetea class); identification of diagnostic species for the class and vegetation subgroups (orders and alliances); development of an expert system for automatic classification of vegetation plots; and production of distribution maps of the Oxycocco‐Sphagnetea class and its alliances. Lo...

Increasing evidence for the effects of Holocene history on modern biotic communities suggests that current explanations of community patterns and conservation strategies require revisiting. Here we focused on Central European rich fens that are at high risk among mire habitats because of their relatively low environmental stability, and hence sensi...

Rising temperatures may endanger fragile ecosystems because their character and key species show different habitat affinities under different climates. This assumption has only been tested in limited geographical scales. In fens, one of the most endangered ecosystems in Europe, broader pH niches have been reported from cold areas and are expected f...

Presented here are phytosociological relevés from two bryophyte-dominated spring communities of the Montio-Cardaminetea class in the Republic of North Macedonia. Both vegetation types had been insufficiently documented or had not even been distinguished in the region. The first alliance, Lycopodo europaei-Cratoneurion commutati, comprises vegetatio...

Water resources and associated ecosystems are becoming highly endangered due to ongoing global environmental changes. Spatial ecological modelling is a promising toolbox for understanding the past, present and future distribution and diversity patterns in groundwater-dependent ecosystems, such as fens, springs, streams, reed beds or wet grasslands....

Aim Pollen has been used before to reconstruct Holocene plant diversity changes in broadly delimited regions such as continents and countries. In this study we ask whether finer‐scale differences in plant diversity, which are of interest to biogeographers and ecologists, are also detectable in the fossil pollen record coming from a single, biogeogr...

Water resources and associated ecosystems are becoming highly endangered due to ongoing global environmental changes. Spatial ecological modelling is a widely used tool for understanding the past, present and future distribution and diversity patterns in groundwater-dependent ecosystems, such as fens, springs, streams, reed beds or wet grasslands....

Aims Reconstruction of the Holocene diversity changes in a biogeographically complex region. Description of major diversity patterns, testing their predictors, and their interpretation in the palaeoecological and biogeographical context. Testing the assumption that pollen record is informative with respect to plant diversity in our study area. Met...

Pollen is an abundant fossil and the most common proxy for plant diversity during the Holocene. Based on datasets in open, forest, and mixed habitats, we used the spatial distribution of floristic diversity to estimate the source area of pollen diversity and identify factors influencing the significance of this relationship. Our study areas are Boh...

Question Filtering of vegetation plot records according to sampling size is an essential methodological step in vegetation studies. In fens, the variation of traditionally used plot sizes seems to limit continental‐scale syntheses following the Braun‐Blanquet approach. Which plot sizes harbour the analogous number of habitat specialists (i.e. diagn...

Question Fens have a well‐developed bryophyte layer covering most of the ground. Non‐sphagnaceous bryophytes, especially the group of so‐called brown mosses, prevail over sphagna under alkaline conditions. In sub‐alkaline conditions, rich fens allow the co‐occurrence of both these functional groups, but sphagna are competitively superior over non‐s...

Understanding pollen-vegetation relationships is crucial for accurate land-cover and climate reconstructions, yet important parameters for quantifying past vegetation abundance are mostly unknown for large parts of Europe harbouring temperate thermophilous ecosystems. We collected pollen and vegetation data in central-eastern Europe, a region cover...

Modern databases containing large amounts of botanical data are a promising source of new results based on large data analyses. We used a new database of plant macrofossils of the Czech and Slovak Republics to compare the recent distributions of putative relict species of fen bryophytes with their past distributions since the late glacial. All the...

The distribution of rare and threatened pleurocarp moss Helodium blandowii in Slovakia has been studied. Three new populations have been found in Slovakia. According to these new records, it seems this European red-list candidate and glacial relict expresses some interesting ecological features, like toxic metal tolerance. We revised its conservati...

Bryophyte species occurring in calcium-rich fens are endangered and retreating in all European countries, including those in Northern Europe, because of fen degradation in intensively exploited landscapes. During our field investigation of mires in northwestern Belarus in July 2017, we discovered new localities of some rare fen bryophyte species. T...

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (relevés) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots...

Quaking rich fens dominated by boreal semi-aquatic brown-mosses such as Scorpidium scorpioides and Calliergon trifarium are extremely rare in the Carpathians. These fens harbour endangered species persisting at few localities in the region. However, their phytosociological classification has not been sufficiently solved yet, because they lack Sphag...

Kalníková, V., Palpurina, S., Peterka, T., Kubešová, S., Plesková, Z. & Sabovljević, M. 2017. Bryophytes on river gravel bars in the Balkan mountains: new records and insights into ecology. — Herzogia 30: 370 –386. Gravel bars are a heterogeneous habitat on the border between the aquatic and terrestrial environments that can maintain a high diversi...

Increasing evidence suggests that past human activities have irreversibly changed soil properties and biodiversity patterns. In the White Carpathian Mts (Central-Eastern Europe), a mosaic of hyper-species-rich and species-rich patches have developed in a regularly mown dry grassland in the area of a glassworks abandoned in the eighteenth century. W...

Aims: Phytosociological classification of fen vegetation (Scheuchzerio palustris-Caricetea fuscae class) differs among European countries. Here we propose a unified vegetation classification of European fens at the alliance level, provide unequivocal assignment rules for individual vegetation plots, identify diagnostic species of fen alliances, and...

Aims Phytosociological classification of fen vegetation ( Scheuchzerio palustris‐Caricetea fuscae class) differs among European countries. Here we propose a unified vegetation classification of European fens at the alliance level, provide unequivocal assignment rules for individual vegetation plots, identify diagnostic species of fen alliances, and...

Meesia triquetra is a circumpolar boreo-arctic moss species typical for well preserved fens, and is rare in southern Europe. During field research on mire vegetation in the Balkan Peninsula, a population of Meesia triquetra was found at the Begovo pole wetland in the Jakupica Mountains. It is the first record of this species for the Republic of Mac...

Question Mosses are important ecosystem engineers in mires. Their pH optima and tolerances presented in the literature differ between regions, even though the high dispersal ability of mosses should prevent local adaptations. Nutrient availability is sometimes suggested as a reason for local niche differentiation. Are patterns in moss niche diversi...

Temperate fens are rapidly losing their specialized species. This applies even to seemingly untouched fens, in which the moss layer in particular is undergoing rapid succession. We analysed historical and recent vegetation-plot data from fens in the agricultural landscape on the Bohemian Massif (Czech Republic) to test the hypotheses that (i) more...

http://www.preslia.cz/P144Peterka.pdf

The tiny land snail Vertigo geyeri Lindholm, 1925 is a rare relict from the Late Glacial, inhabiting treeless spring fens. The main aims of this study were (1) to summarize present knowledge on distribution of V. geyeri in Slovakia and in Poland; (2) to analyse its ecology and habitat preferences; and (3) to suggest suitable conservation and manage...

Paludella squarrosa belongs to the monotypic genus Paludella (family Meesiaceae). Despite the fact that it is widespread in boreal region, the moss is quite rare in Central Europe. From Slovakia, 4 of 11 historical sites found in literauture were verified and 9 new localities were recently found. Most of historical sites are either completely destr...