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Effect of reintroduced manual mowing on biodiversity in abandoned fen meadows

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Abstract

Wetlands have recently become of high environmental interest. The restoration effects on habitats like fens are one of the main topics of recent restoration ecology, especially due to their interconnection with other ecosystems. We studied the manual mowing effect on abandoned fen using the response of three study taxa: diurnal butterflies, flower-visiting beetles and vascular plants. Our results showed that butterflies seems to be quickly-responding indicator taxon for evaluation and that restored management had a positive effect on both species richness and composition of this insect group. The results indicated that the manual mowing effect could be rapid. In comparison with the surrounding landscape, we found that: (i) the manually mowed site was most similar to strictly protected area, (ii) some species of high conservation value could reach higher abundance in restored than protected site, and (iii) manual mowing could bring a new type of habitat (i.e., spatial heterogeneity) compared to the other management types (abandonment, conservation and agri-environmental mowing). The main implication seems to be optimistic for practice: The manual mowing of long-term abandoned fen is leading to the creation of habitat with high conservation value in a relatively short time.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the non-governmental organisation Lesák, o.s. (http://www.lesak.eu) for logistics and the creation of different management activities, D. Kurková, J. Stratílek, J. Matoušek and J. Šimek for historical information, L. Bourdon for English proof reading and two reviewers for suggestions. This research was partly supported by the Grant CIGA no. 20144302.

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  1. Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Kamycka 1176, CZ-16521, Prague 6, Czech Republic

    Jakub Horak

  2. East Bohemian Museum in Pardubice, Zamek 2, CZ-53002, Pardubice, Czech Republic

    Lenka Safarova

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  1. Jakub Horak
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Correspondence to Jakub Horak.

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Horak, J., Safarova, L. Effect of reintroduced manual mowing on biodiversity in abandoned fen meadows. Biologia 70, 113–120 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1515/biolog-2015-0009

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