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Habitat requirements of endangered species in a former coppice of high conservation value

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Abstract

Transformation of coppices to high forests has caused fundamental changes in site conditions and a decline of many species across Central Europe. Nevertheless, some formerly coppiced forests still harbour a number of the declining species and have become biodiversity hotspots in the changing landscape. We focused on the best-preserved remnant of formerly grazed and coppiced subcontinental oak forest in the Czech Republic – the Dúbrava forest near the town of Hodonín. To improve our understanding of the ecology of declining species, we studied local habitat requirements of vascular plants most endangered at the national level. We recorded vegetation composition and sampled important site variables in plots with the largest populations of endangered species and in additional plots placed randomly across all major forest habitats. We demonstrated that sites with endangered species have a highly uneven distribution in ecological space and that their species composition is often similar to open-canopy oak forests. Within this habitat, the endangered species are concentrated in places with a high light availability and high soil pH. Light-demanding species characteristic of subcontinental oak forests are the best indicators of these sites, while broadly distributed shade-tolerant and nutrient-demanding species avoid them. These results support the view that the occurrence of many endangered species in the Dúbrava forest is a legacy of the long history of traditional management that kept the canopies open. Light-demanding species are now threatened by ongoing successional changes. Therefore, active conservation measures are recommended, including opening up the canopies, early thinning of young stands, control of expansive and invasive species and understorey grazing or mowing.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks go out to Martin Kopecký for calculation of the convergence index, Martina Fabšičová, Pavel Unar, Vladan Riedl and Martin Kopecký for help with vegetation sampling within project IAA600050812, Radim Hédl for kindly providing soil chemistry data acquired within project IAA600050812, David Zelený for the discussion regarding ordination methods and Jan W. Jongepier for improving our English. This paper was produced as part of the project ‘Coppice forests as the production and biological alternative for the future’ (No. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0267) with financial contribution of the EC and the state budget of the Czech Republic. Besides, the research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) / ERC Grant agreement No. 278065, and the long-term research project RVO 67985939 from the Czech Academy of Sciences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Czech Academy of Sciences, Lidická 25/27, 602 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jan Roleček & Ondřej Vild

  2. Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, 611 37, Brno, Czech Republic

    Jan Roleček & Ondřej Vild

  3. Cihlářská 18, 695 03, Hodonín, Czech Republic

    Jiří Sladký

  4. Department of Forest Botany, Dendrology and Geobiocenology, Faculty of Forestry and Wood Technology, Mendel University, Zemědělská 3, 613 00, Brno, Czech Republic

    Radomír Řepka

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  1. Jan Roleček
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Roleček, J., Vild, O., Sladký, J. et al. Habitat requirements of endangered species in a former coppice of high conservation value. Folia Geobot 52, 59–69 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-016-9276-6

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