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.

Results of two major projects, in which members of our group participated, have just been published: Functional traits mediate the effect of land use on drivers of community stability within and across trophic levels was published in Science Advances - www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

A new article from Ohrazení is out! besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

🚨 New paper from our group! 🚨 Using a realistic species loss scenario, we show only limited effects of #biodiversity loss on below-ground biomass & root #traits. 🌱 But short-term root production is strongly affected! 📄🔓 Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/1365... @journalofecology.bsky.social #Ecology 🌐

We were present at the open day of the University of South Bohemia.

Šuspa with Ondra Mudrák got a new GAČR project titled Coupling of the plant leaf economic spectrum, litter decomposition, and soil biota: When do they fit together? This project aims to test the importance of litter quality through a set of laboratory and field experiments.