Department of Population Ecology - The Institute of Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences

Department of Population Ecology > 06. Plant species coexistence

Department of Population Ecology

06. Plant species coexistence

Why some plant communities are locally more diverse than other communities of the same vegetation type or why local diversity changes in the face of global drivers remain central questions in plant ecology research. Differences in local diversity can be attributed to neutral processes that assume that species are not much different from each other: differences in local richness can simply reflect variability in richness on larger spatial scales (Zobel M. 1997. TREE 12: 266-269). However, species usually differ in many features, including competitive ability. Plant communities are dominated by plants that are better competitors, but surprisingly, other species often manage to grow alongside them. Our group is interested in the mechanisms that promote/constrain the coexistence of plant species in temperate grassland communities. For that, we use observational, experimental and modelling approaches in distinct grassland systems in the Czech Republic, together with experiments in a common garden at the Institute of Botany CAS.