Effect of mowing versus abandonment of mesic grasslands in Central Europe on biomass use for biogas production: Implications for semi-natural ecosystem conservation.

The economic management of lignocellulosic biomass from semi-natural grasslands is now a challenge across Europe. The abandonment of mowing these grasslands leads to the gradual degradation of these ecosystems. This study investigates how chemical and biological factors affect the suitability of biomass from abandoned grasslands for biogas production.

Spatial patterns of vascular plant species richness in Poland - a data set.

Recognition of species richness spatial patterns is important for nature conservation and theoretical studies. Inventorying species richness, especially at a larger spatial extent is challenging, thus different data sources are joined and harmonized to obtain a comprehensive data set. Here we present a new data set showing vascular plant species richness in Poland based on a grid of 10 × 10 km squares.

Assessing the Genetic Diversity of Daylily Germplasm Using SSR Markers: Implications for Daylily Breeding.

This work aims to characterize the genetic diversity of species, early hybrids, and cultivars using microsatellite simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, as well as analyze and identify the origin of spp. early hybrids. For this research, samples were collected from different types of daylily species, early hybrids (known or hypothetically first-generation hybrids from species), foreign, and Lithuanian varieties.

Vegetation of temperate inland salt-marshes reflects local environmental conditions.

Inland salt marshes are recognized as habitats of unique and valuable vegetation at the European scale. There is still a lack of generalization regarding its vegetation syntaxonomy and environmental requirements, which is needed for its effective protection. To falsify our hypothesis about vegetation dependence on environmental requirements we aimed at description of the syntaxonomical units present in temperate European inland salt marshes and identification of their main environmental drivers.

Formalized classification of ephemeral wetland vegetation (Isoëto-Nanojuncetea class) in Poland (Central Europe).

Formalized classification of the class Isoëto-Nanojuncetea has not been performed in Poland. We used 69,562 relevés stored in Polish Vegetation Database. Based on the literature and expert knowledge we selected 63 diagnostic species for the Isoëto-Nanojuncetea class.

The effect of abandonment on vegetation composition and soil properties in Molinion meadows (SW Poland).

Intermittently wet meadows of the Molinion alliance, as with many other grasslands of high-nature value, have become increasingly exposed to abandonment due to their low economic value. The potential consequences of land abandonment are the decrease in species diversity and environmental alterations. The issue of land-use induced changes in plant species composition and soil physico-chemical parameters have been rarely studied in species-rich intermittently wet grasslands.

History and environment shape species pools and community diversity in European beech forests.

A central hypothesis of ecology states that regional diversity influences local diversity through species-pool effects. Species pools are supposedly shaped by large-scale factors and then filtered into ecological communities, but understanding these processes requires the analysis of large datasets across several regions. Here, we use a framework of community assembly at a continental scale to test the relative influence of historical and environmental drivers, in combination with regional or local species pools, on community species richness and community completeness.

A higher-level classification of the Pannonian and western Pontic steppe grasslands (Central and Eastern Europe).

Questions: What are the main floristic patterns in the Pannonian and western Pontic steppe grasslands? What are the diagnostic species of the major subdivisions of the class (temperate Euro-Siberian dry and semi-dry grasslands)?

Location: Carpathian Basin (E Austria, SE Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, N Croatia and N Serbia), Ukraine, S Poland and the Bryansk region of W Russia.

Methods: We applied a geographically stratified resampling to a large set of relevés containing at least one indicator species of steppe grasslands. The resulting data set of 17 993 relevés was classified using the TWINSPAN algorithm.

Environmental factors associated with the distribution of floodwater mosquito eggs in irrigated fields in Wrocław, Poland.

A survey of distribution patterns of floodwater mosquito eggs related to environmental conditions such as moisture and plant associations was conducted by using soil samples from irrigated fields in Wrocław, Poland. Mosquito egg distribution was determined by repeatedly flooding the soil samples with aerated water at a temperature of 25° C. Under laboratory conditions, hatching in installments of Aedes caspius (Pallas) and Aedes vexans (Meigen) were commonly observed.