Changes in the moss layer of Czech fens indicate early succession triggered by nutrient enrichment.

Michal Hájek 1 , Martin Jiroušek 2 1 , Jana Navrátilová 1 3 , Eliška Horodyská 1 4 , Tomáš Peterka 1 , Zuzana Plesková 1 , Josef Navrátil 5 , Petra Hájková 1 6 & Tomáš Hájek 1

Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany and Zoology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlářská 2, CZ-611 37 Brno, Czech Republic
  2. Department of Plant Biology, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University in Brno, Zemědělská 1, CZ-613 00 Brno, Czech Republic
  3. Department of Functional Ecology, Institute of Botany, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Dukelská 135, CZ-379 82 Třeboň, Czech Republic
  4. Department of Species Protection, Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, Kaplanova 1931/1, CZ-148 00 Praha 11 – Chodov, Czech Republic (present address)
  5. Department of Biological Studies, Faculty of Agriculture, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Studentská 13, CZ-307 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic
  6. Department of Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Lidická 25/27, CZ-657 20 Brno, Czech Republic

Published: 20 September 2015

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Abstract

Temperate fens are rapidly losing their specialized species. This applies even to seemingly untouched fens, in which the moss layer in particular is undergoing rapid succession. We analysed historical and recent vegetation-plot data from fens in the agricultural landscape on the Bohemian Massif (Czech Republic) to test the hypotheses that (i) more acidicolous and/or competitively stronger species that benefit from increased nutrient availability regionally increase in frequency and in percentage cover, and (ii) these competitively stronger bryophytes have become more tolerant of high pH because of the increased nutrient supply. We worked with two datasets: a precise dataset (the most similar pairs of samples from the same fens) and a large dataset (all of the historical and recent samples from the area studied).We found that calcicolous brown mosses specialized for growing in fens have recently been retreating to places with the highest pH, being replaced by more nutrient-demanding species such as Calliergonella cuspidata, Sphagnum palustre, S. teres and Straminergon stramineum in most of rich fens. Sphagnum fallax and S. flexuosum spread only in poor fens. At the level of individual species, the intensity of change in species abundance (cover-weighted frequency change) correlated significantly with the median potassium concentration in the biomass of species based on a large set of recent data. We conclude that nature conservancy authorities should monitor changes in the species composition of the moss layer as this may signal the initial phase of nutrient enrichment of seemingly intact fens in agricultural landscapes.

Keywords

bryophytes, decline of threatened species, mire, nutrients, pH, vegetation change

How to cite

Hájek M., Jiroušek M., Navrátilová J., Horodyská E., Peterka T., Plesková Z., Navrátil J., Hájková P. & Hájek T. (2015) Changes in the moss layer of Czech fens indicate early succession triggered by nutrient enrichment. – Preslia 87: 279–301