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On the Nothernmost and Southernmost Limits of European Land Snail Spatial Ranges
Křepelová, Lucie ; Juřičková, Lucie (advisor) ; Horsák, Michal (referee)
The aim of this work was to evaluate the limits of ranges of European land snail species along the north-south gradient. To work out the document it was necessary to prepare the set of digitalized maps, that enabled to create the database of ranges of the individual land snails species. Based on obtained data I tried to identify places where the northern and southern borders of species ranges are the most frequent. The landsnails' ranges are affected not only by particular life requirements of the individual species (potential limits), but also by other conditions, especially climatic, geographical and historical (truncated limits). In this work I focused on their differentiation. Above mentioned process also enabled me to track the north- south changes in species richness of the landsnails taking into consideration the truncated and potential limits. The most important natural barriers constraining that numerous of species cannot naturally widespread from the south to the north are the Scandinavian Mountains, the Alpes and the Carpathians and suprisingly also southern borders of german and polish lowlands. On the other hand, spreading of the species form the north to the south is limited only by the Alpes. I also tried to distinguish the group of species whose ranges are not influenced by these...
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Climatic determinates of elevation ranges in tropical vertebrates
Vobořilová, Kateřina ; Hořák, David (advisor) ; Šmíd, Jiří (referee)
Tropical regions are amongst the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. The significant species richness of these ecosystems is evident in the number of vertebrate species due to their distribution along altitudinal gradients. The distribution of vertebrates throughout altitudinal gradients is a natural phenomenon by which vertebrates respond to diverse abiotic conditions. Together with the geographic distribution of mountains, biotic influences, thermal physiology of individual vertebrate groups or climatic changes, these abiotic conditions create specific conditions for vertebrates. All of these factors may contribute to the spread of vertebrates to lower or higher altitudes. They may also influence altitudinal migration, depending on the adaptation of individual vertebrate species. In this thesis I focused on how individual abiotic determinants such as temperature, precipitation and air humidity, as well as climatic changes, can positively or negatively influence the distribution ranges of four vertebrate groups along elevational gradients of tropical mountains. Keywords: temperature, precipitation, cloudiness, tropics, elevation, geographical distribution, species richness
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Application of bioacoustic approaches in investigation of bird species interactions and community species richness
Vokurková, Jana ; Sedláček, Ondřej (advisor) ; Remeš, Vladimír (referee) ; Szymański, Paweł (referee)
Birdsong is one of the most fascinating communication tools in the animal kingdom, whether it is used for attracting a mate or in territory defense. In my dissertation, I present evidence that we can successfully study the role of birdsong in territorial behaviour, its seasonal variability, and ultimately its role in evolutionary processes thanks to modern bioacoustic and ecoacoustic approaches. By combining the bioacoustic approach with molecular analyses, I demonstrate that in the model system of two closely related passerine species, the heterospecific song convergence in their secondary contact zone is based on cultural transmission, and not on interspecific hybridisation and/or gene introgression. My dissertation further extends into the tropical zone, which is generally characterized by less pronounced environmental seasonality compared to the temperate zone. The study of potential seasonality in singing activity and the proportion of vocalizing species in this zone therefore requires year-round monitoring, which is possible thanks to the quite recent development of automated recording units (ARU). First, we confirmed that using ARU provides very similar estimates of community composition, species richness, and abundance to traditional field methods (point counts) in the specific conditions...
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The effect of habitat continuity and management on species composition and diversity
Hubáčková, Barbora ; Münzbergová, Zuzana (advisor) ; Mudrák, Ondřej (referee)
Semi-natural grasslands of the eastern Moravia have big potential to host species-rich plant communities. However, changes in land-use during the second half of the last century were rapid and vast and many grasslands had been ploughed over. In the early 80s some arable lands were sown with low diversity clover-grass mixture and transferred back to grassland. Restoration of grasslands on former arable fields is a major challenge. Their colonisation by grassland species may be complicated by initial seeding productive low diversity seed mixtures. The aim of this study was to estimate differences in species composition and species diversity between ex-arable artificially seeded grasslands and fragments of grasslands with continuity over 70 years in the north part of White Carpathian Mts., SE Czech Republic and identify species traits limiting species ability to colonize the ex-arable grasslands. Target plant species (total of 137) were surveyed on 66 grasslands. Surveyed grasslands were according to continuity and type of management. Coordinates of centroids from each polygon (i. e. surveyed grassland) were used to treat the spatial correlation of the surveyed grasslands. The effect of continuity on species composition and diversity was tested after accounting for differences in the management and...
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Diversity of zooplankton of Tatras lakes in space and time
Čablová, Radka ; Černý, Martin (advisor) ; Šorf, Michal (referee)
This thesis is the first of its kind that evaluates the species composition, species richness and species abundance of zooplankton in littoral samples of 90 Tatras lakes (Western and High Tatras of Slovakia and Poland) collected in September 2004 in the context of environmental parameters of lakes and spatial relationships of individual lakes. The most frequently occurring species in the Tatras lakes in 2004 were also evaluated in terms of their occurrence in the lakes a century ago (Minkiewicz 1914, 1917 and Lityński 1913, 1917), during the period of acidification (Ertl & Vranovský 1964, Ertl et al. 1965, Hrbáček et al. 1974, Stuchlík et al. 1985) and during the period of recovery of the lakes from acidification (Hořická et al. 2006, Sacherová et al. 2006). Relationships between variables were analysed using Poisson regression, cluster analysis with multinomial regression, canonical correspondence analysis, Mantel tests and multiple negative binomial regression. Using analyses, lakes were divided into four clusters (A, B, C, D). Each cluster consisted of lakes with the same environmental and spatial factors and similar species composition. Thirteen zooplankton species (Acanthocyclops vernalis, Acroperus harpae, Alona affinis, Arctodiaptomus alpinus, Ceriodaphnia quadrangula, Cyclops abyssorum...
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The study of bryophyte species richness and community composition on a very fine spatial scale connected to in situ measured microclimate
Růžičková, Anna ; Man, Matěj (advisor) ; Marková, Ivana (referee)
The life of bryophytes is closely connected with their surrounding environment. Changes in atmospheric conditions on the microscale directly affect the physiological functions of bryophytes, which in turn determine their distribution. The current development of technologies allows us to measure the microclimate affecting bryophytes directly in the field. Nevertheless, there have not been many studies published examining the response of bryophytes to in situ measured microclimate. This diploma thesis is one of the first in Europe to provide data from continuous field microclimatic measurement performed on a scale relevant to bryophytes. It deals with the influence of the microclimate on the bryophyte species richness and community composition within a single gorge in the Bohemian Switzerland National Park. For 17 months, 38 HOBO Pro v2 Onset dataloggers were recording air temperature and air humidity 10 cm above the ground. I performed detailed bryological survey on two differently sized plots (circle with a radius of 1 or 2 m) around each of the dataloggers. The microclimate is influenced by the topography and character of the vegetation, therefore I derived topographical data from a digital terrain model (resolution of 1 m), calculated the canopy openness using hemispherical photographs and...
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Biodiversity of green roofs
Matoušková, Kateřina ; Sedláček, Ondřej (advisor) ; Šípek, Petr (referee)
Green roofs offer interesting multifunctinaly solutions to many problems at once. In a small area they bring benefits to people and nature. They thermally insulate buildings, improve the local microclimate and reduce the city's heat island efect. Green roofs improve air quality and also help retain water in the landscape. In combination with solar panels and retention tanks, green roofs can contribute to the modern trend of building green - sustainable - buildings. Green roofs can be used for growing food sources and for relaxation as well. Wild plants can spontaneously colonize green roofs and thereby expand their habitats in cities. The plants create habitats for many animals (especially invertebrates) and provide nectar sources to pollinators. Except food habitats, they offer birds habitat for nesting and resting place during their migration. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the contribution of green roofs to urban biodiversity. At present, howewer, most scientific studies deal with the advantges of green roofs in connection with enviromental protection or the technical side. A small part of the studies examines the biodiversity of green roofs. My goal was to find out which factors influence a biodiversity of green roofs the most and to design an ideal roofs solution with the greatest...
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Habitat characteristics accounting for the attractiveness of military training areas for birds: a case study from the Hradiště military training area
Hernová, Jana ; Reif, Jiří (advisor) ; Vojta, Jaroslav (referee)
Military areas are extraordinary biodiversity-rich due to limited economic activities and a specific way of using the areas for military training. Previous research has also revealed their positive influence on bird species diversity, this applies to endangered species in particular. However, the exact biotope characteristics attracting birds are insufficiently known. In this regard, I expected an important role of heterogeneity of the environment. The aim of the thesis was therefore: (I) to find out the difference of environmental heterogeneity between a military area (MA) and the surrounding landscape, both in a forest and a non-forest sites, (II) to find out what biotope characteristics attract birds in open landscape and (III) what characteristics attract birds in forest. Fieldwork took place in a still active MA of Hradiště and neighboring controls of Bochov and Ostrov. In total, 80 study plots were surveyed for representation of individual biotopes (39 types in total) and the number of fragments of woody vegetation. Data on bird species richness were taken from the thesis of Bušek (2015), surveyed birds at identical study plots and calculated total number of bird species and the number of endangered bird species at each plot. The open landscape of MA has, compared to the surrounding cultural...
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Patterns and processes in spatial distribution of plant species across scales
Macek, Martin ; Wild, Jan (advisor) ; Lepš, Jan (referee) ; Zimmermann, Niklaus E. (referee)
In this thesis, I aimed to identify factors shaping plant distribution at different spatial scales, correlate them with environmental heterogeneity, identify causal processes and test general hypothesis on the nature of response curve shapes and species richness patterns. General review of the topic is introduced in the first chapter, followed by five chapters presenting three already published studies and two manuscripts. The first study deals with processes responsible for creation of fine-scaled spatial pattern of spruce seedlings and saplings, emerging after bark-beetle disturbance in mountain spruce forest. Aggregated pattern, replicating previous generation of spruce trees, emerges in consequence to microsite-dependent mortality, as was surveyed through repeated monitoring of the fate of individual seedlings. The second study explores spatial variability in forest understory temperatures at the landscape scale and its relevance for understory plant distribution. As the main source of variability in understory communities we identified seasonal maximum temperatures. Using GIS modelling approach, we created spatially continuous prediction, which outperformed state-of-art climatic grids used currently by ecologists. The third study on the shape of species responses along elevational gradients...
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Mycorrhizal fungal diversity along altitudinal gradients
Schultzová, Pavlína ; Kohout, Petr (advisor) ; Mašínová, Tereza (referee)
Mycorrhizal symbiosis is an integral component of all terrestrial ecosystems and the most widespread mutualistic association in the world. Nevertheless, our current knowledge regarding diversity patterns of mycorrhizal fungi along altitudinal gradients is considerably limited. Published studies to date suggest either a decrease in mycorrhizal fungal diversity with increasing elevation or a hump-shaped pattern, similar to the general altitudinal diversity patterns that have been observed in macroorganisms. Lower mycorrhizal fungal diversity at higher elevations in some regions may significantly impact host plants migrating upward due to global warming. Therefore, insights into the shifts in mycorrhizal fungal distribution along elevational gradients can provide better predictions of future effects of climate change on mycorrhizal fungi and host plants. In order to advance our knowledge of mycorrhizal fungal diversity, it is crucial to deepen our understanding of the factors that shape mycorrhizal fungal responses along altitudinal gradients.
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