The Bug-Network
Petr Dostál, Zuzana Münzbergová
We participate in a global collaborative research network that aims to assess the impact of invertebrate herbivores and pathogenic fungi on plant communities and ecosystems. The BugNet aims to collect data on plant- and invertebrate functional community characteristics to investigate how the functional composition of invertebrate communities changes along abiotic and biotic gradients. A further objective is to set up identical invertebrate herbivore and fungal exclusion experiments to quantify plant community and ecosystem responses to insects, molluscs and fungal pathogens in a wide range of herbaceous-dominated ecosystems.
Publications:
Kempel A. & al. (incl. Dostál P., Münzbergová Z.) 2025: The Bug-Network (BugNet): A Global Experimental Network Testing the Effects of Invertebrate Herbivores and Fungal Pathogens on Plant Communities and Ecosystem Function in Open Ecosystems. Ecology and Evolution 15, 1 – 16. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.72111