Until the second half of the 20th century, the Czech landscape was traditionally maintained by traditional farming and grazing that produced a heterogeneous mosaic of microhabitats. However, the abandonment of traditional farming caused the areas with early stages of succession to overgrow and become homogeneous, resulting in the serious loss of arthropod biodiversity. This traditional farming therefore needs to be replaced by an active conservation management method. This Master thesis studies the effect of conservation management on the arachnofauna of the steppe biotopes Pláně Nature Monument. Specifically, the influence of disturbance, mowing, prescribed burning, and non-intervention on abundance, species richness, occurrence of rare and endangered species and species and functional composition of spiders was investigated. Spider sampling was carried out using pitfall traps and sweeping during the whole season in 2017 and 2018. The treatments were applied on the patches (4 x 5 m) and replicated at three sites. A total of 154 species with 11,634 specimens including many rare and endangered spider species were captured. Management had no significant effect on the abundance and species richness of epigeic spiders. Herb-dwelling spiders had high abundance and high species richness in control and burned patches. Burned patches had high values of conservation indicators, where the significant proportion of xerothermic species and hunting guilds were represented. Intensive disturbance had rather a negative effect on the overall arachnofauna. Prescribed burning had positive results for most of the studied indicators. The results show that interventions performed on a small area can significantly support the valuable arachnofauna of steppe habitats. To support habitat heterogeneity and the diversity of organisms that depend on it, the interventions should be combined and performed in such a scale that would avoid extensive habitat disturbance.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:428386 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Hamřík, Tomáš |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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