Processing of Ohrazení biomass is at its peak. Šuspa's plots were completed last week, Aleš's plots are now being sorted. While Šuspa's experiment focuses on removal of the dominant species, Aleš simulates natural species loss by removing rare species to maintain five diversity levels.

Lucka defended her bachelor’s thesis. She monitored myrmecochorous plants and their mutualistic ant partners across multiple grassland habitats. She found a positive relationship in diversity, but not in abundance. However, their ecological demands do not closely match.

Helča is investigating how vertical and horizontal structure can be quantified along a productivity gradient in grasslands. She is comparing a range of structural metrics, including fine-scale spatial patterns of species distribution, species height, light interception, and biomass distribution.

Wiley has recently sent off the certificates for highly cited papers in their journals. Our group has representation in 10 most cited papers published in 2024.

Šuspa's cacophonic orchestra (Šukas) has 30th anniversary this year! We celebrated it with a concert.

Šuspa gave a lecture on Monday at the Secondary Business School at Husova street on the topic of Papua New Guinea - nature, people, our research and our students.

A new study led by Mercedes Valerio titled Twenty-year effect of sewage-sludge fertilization in a Mediterranean grassland: Impact on species composition, functional groups and interrelation with climate is now published in in PPEES. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A conference of the Czech Botanical Society focused on Czech research abroad was held over the weekend. Šuspa and Lucka gave nice talks about their research in Papua New Guinea. Šuspa was elected an honorary member of the society. Congratulation!

Last week, we established a new seed addition experiment in the Prachatice region. We have two pairs of historically disturbed and undisturbed sites. We will observe the survival of the sown resident species in the gaps and vegetation.

In Papua New Guinea, we have focused on maintaining our permanent seedling plots and celebrated their 10th anniversary with another seedling survey and a new round of canopy photos taken above them. We were happy to welcome the first-ever female assistant, Lena, to our team!

We sampled litter for decomposition experiment at disturbed and undisturbed localities with communities with different litter decomposability in the České Budějovice and Prachatice region. Also, Reynoutria japonica will serve as easily decomposable and Calamagrostis epigejos as recalcitrant litter.

Eva conducted this year's last seedling census in the Prachatice multi-condition experiment. The survival experiment is conducted in both vegetation and competition-free gaps. The species do not perform well in competition, and the best performing species is Plantago lanceolata.

Yann Hautier from Utrecht University was visiting our working group. He gave a talk at the Ecology Seminar entitled Biodiversity and temporal stability of naturally assembled ecosystems across spatial scales. We had nice discussions about his projects, but also ours.

A new publication led by Ondra, now published in @jvegsci.bsky.social is the result of fieldwork by almost our entire working group. We examined the intraspecific trait variability of 15 Carex species across South Bohemia. You can find the article here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Faculty of Science, USB, České Budějovice, Czechia offers a two-year research-oriented Master's study in Ecology. prf.jcu.cz/ecology Application deadline: 31 October 2025. Tuition fee: EU citizens: 500 CZK per year (≈ 20 EUR) Non-EU: 12000 CZK per year (≈ 480 EUR)

Šuspa led an excursion for students and the public at the weekend. Roasting sausages and a visit to the pub were included. Šuspa has demonstrated many nice plants, among others, Blechnum spicant, Potentilla norvegica, and Scirpus radicans. Photos by @eusic.bsky.social

The autumn weeding of the multisite experiment near Prachatice is finished. Focal species are colonising plots at 16 localities. Ingrowth cores were also installed in each plot. We managed despite the rocky soil and some rainy days. @terezasvancarova.bsky.social @jsegrestin.bsky.social

Now, while weeding the multisite project near Prachatice, we look back at the Ohrazení weeding in August. As communities are stabilising and the weeded biomass is lower, we managed to do all three experiments in one day (plots of Šuspa, Aleš and Helena).

Milan Štech, Šuspa, and @mariekonecna.bsky.social were at the botanical weekend for high school teachers in Slavkov, near Český Krumlov. Many students attended. They went to Vyšenské kopce and other protected areas. @terezasvancarova.bsky.social came to demonstrate measurements of photosynthesis.

September is the time of excursions. Šuspa and Péťa were in Mohelno last week with 30 students. Not only were plants demonstrated, but also animals, as ornithologist Kryštof Korejs was also present.

"Trait-based Ecology" book by Francesco de Bello, Carlos P. Carmona, André T. C. Dias, Lars Götzenberger, and Marco Moretti, Cambridge University Press is now out in Japanese: www.google.cz/books/editio... www.cambridge.org/core/books/h...

Lucka is working now on her bachelor thesis on the relationship of the diversity of ants and ant-dispersed plants, myrmecochores, across different habitats. Now she started the ant sampling. @mariekonecna.bsky.social

Aleš and @mariekonecna.bsky.social were guests of the radio program Dopolední host (Morning guest) in Český rozhlas České Budějovice. They discussed the loss of diversity in connection to the recent global study they co-authored: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

After six years, Aleš, Eva, and @mariekonecna.bsky.social resampled their #DarkDivNet core plots in Novohradské hory. Relevés in pairs of mesic meadows, beech forests, and waterlogged spruce forests were done.

Relevés and biomass harvest have been finished at the Prachatice multisite experiment. We were also hunting the litter of the dominant Festuca rubra for later. The field season is still not at an end! @terezasvancarova.bsky.social @jsegrestin.bsky.social

Helena Kasíková has started her PhD on the role of structural complexity in grasslands with Aleš. She has already finished this year’s field work, including measuring plant heights and light penetration in her permanent plots at Ohrazení.

A look back at the Day with the Faculty of Science in České Budějovice for kids. Maruška and Eva demonstrated multiple types of plant dispersal to elementary school students. They examined seeds under the binocular microscopes and studied various adaptations to dispersal.

Last week’s campaign combined tech & teamwork! Multispectral drone flights by Leyre Pedrós Pla (PhD student of Francesco de Bello) + trait sampling across all Prachatice grassland sites = 710 leaf samples processed in 2 days. Big thanks to the whole team! @jsegrestin.bsky.social #RemoteSensing

All three Ohrazení experiments are now harvested and sorted into species. The last experiment finished was of Helča, where the asymmetry in competition for light is manipulated.

A new paper from our group, led by Terezie Rychtecká, was recently published in Functional Ecology. It is showing the effects of management, but also interannual variability in seedling recruitment in a species-rich wet meadow. For more details, visit: doi.org/10.1111/1365...

There will be a seminar by Lucrecia tomorrow at the lecture room in the Department of Botany, České Budějovice. You can reach it online: teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-joi...

Yesterday's biomass harvest from the experiment of Aleš was finally pleasant. We almost avoided the rain, and Šuspa prepared a great culinary treat - brochettes on the fire. The only sad thing is that some nice species, such as sedges, are decreasing.

Study led by @szilviamneumann.bsky.social revealed bigger variability in leaf traits between Carex species compared to within-species differences. Decomposition rates also showed similar patterns through the afterlife effect under controlled conditions. Please see more in Oecologia: rdcu.be/eqPu6

lucrecialipoma.bsky.social, a researcher at IMBIV (CONICET, Argentina) and assistant professor at the National University of Córdoba, is now visiting our working group. She arrived at the peak of the field season and had already joined the harvest of the biomass from Šuspa's experiment.

We have now been working on data sampling for Ondra’s project in two regions. We did relevés, and now we are processing traits in the field and lab. This is done at localities with contrasting species richness and litter decomposability, crossed with different disturbance levels.

Relevés are now done at Ohrazení in three long-term experiments. Šuspa started first, Aleš continued after him, and then Helča. Each of them will spend about one week there.

Šuspa was given an extra minute to talk at the PopBio conference on his birthday. He spoke about traits and resistance and resilience of meadow species composition to mismanagement from his 30-year experiment at Ohrazení.

Looking back at PopBio, which took place in Prague last week. Our group members had six standard talks, and Jules was invited as one of the keynote speakers.

Helča, student of Aleš, defended today her master's thesis entitled Competition for light and its impact on community structure. Congratulation!

Group of "trait ecologists" published a large paper on the state of the art of the discipline in Ecological Monographs. doi.org/10.1002/ecm.... - There are four authors in the team from our group, including the leading author, Francesco de Bello.

We maintained the multisite experiment in the Prachatice region by removing selected species. There is an experiment conducted within the Ph.D. project of @terezasvancarova.bsky.social. She is now doing relevés at these experimental sites and the surrounding grasslands. @jsegrestin.bsky.social

We did a yearly weeding of two removal experiments at Ohrazení. These are the removal of rare species by Aleš and the increasing and decreasing asymmetry of competition for light, i.e. weeding according to plant height by Helča.

A new article focusing on the carbon cycle from our group, led by Jules has just been published in Ecology!

Šuspa led an excursion from Bujanov to Kaplice. We saw many plants and, of course, roasted sausages over the fire.

📣Cutting vEdge Tools is back! A special 3-hour long session will close our cycle on the facets of biodiversity. This time, Francesco de Bello and Lars Götzenberger will focus on functional trait diversity! Register for the free webinar at us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

New global study of dark diversity by #DarkDivNet led by Meelis Pärtel, where Aleš, Maruška, and Eva are co-authors with the dataset from Novohradské Hory, is now out in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Šuspa's article received enough citations to be a Top Cited Article. Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #TopCitedArticle @wiley.com

We have a new undergraduate student focused on studying plant-ant interactions. Lucie will evaluate the interdependence (diversity and abundance) of myrmecochorous plants and mutualistic ants at meadows across a diversity gradient.

New field season has been started! We removed the ingrowth cores placed to measure belowground biomass in permanent plots at Ohrazení.

Traditional grasslands face biodiversity loss from mismanagement. A 30-year experiment showed that fertilization had stronger negative effects than mowing abandonment, with slower community recovery post-fertilization suggesting that resilience depends on past land use.