Jitka Klimešová

The Czech Academy of Sciences | AVCR · Functional Ecology, Trebon

Aim The influence of species phylogenetic relatedness on the formation of insular assemblages remains understudied in functional island biogeography, especially for terrestrial habitat islands (i.e. distinct habitat patches embedded in a matrix that differ in the prevailing environmental conditions). Here, we tested three eco‐evolutionary hypothese...

Plants possess a large variety of nonacquisitive belowground organs, such as rhizomes, tubers, bulbs, and coarse roots. These organs determine a whole set of functions that are decisive in coping with climate, productivity, disturbance, and biotic interactions, and have been hypothesized to affect plant distribution along environmental gradients. W...

Background and aims Nutrient allocation and scaling affect plant strategy and metabolism but this information is rarely incorporated into fundamental ecological frameworks. One important question is whether plants with a different ecological strategy share the same nutrient allocation patterns. Methods Here, we tested scaling between nitrogen (N),...

Open biomes such as grasslands, savannas, shrublands are associated with many global biodiversity hotspots, and cover ∼60% of land globally. Yet, extensive and increasing anthropogenic activities threaten their functioning and biodiversity. Here, we argue that, in open biomes, researchers and stakeholders (e.g., policy-makers, practitioners) should...

Fire-adaptive traits in plants of tropical and subtropical grassy ecosystems have been the subject of considerable global research, but only recently studied in pyrogenic Florida subtropical grasslands. Plant growth forms, belowground organs, and post-fire recovery strategies were studied for 198 grassland specialists in peninsular Florida. Communi...

Root-sprouting (RS) clonal herbs are reported to be better adapted to severe disturbance than other clonal species, and their investments in clonal and storage organs are smaller than those in rhizomes. RS ability seems advantageous, so why is it not more common among plants? In a pot greenhouse experiment, we subjected two closely related clonal h...

Plant trait variation is constrained by mechanical and energetic trade‐offs as attested by the global spectrum of plant form and function and the fine‐root economics space for above‐ and below‐ground traits. However, traits that are key for fitness maintenance in some plant groups, such as clonal and bud bank traits, have not yet been integrated wi...

Intraspecific trait variability has been identified as a possible reason why the trait-based approach in functional ecology is not as predictive as we would like. However, sources of intraspecific variability are not only largely acknowledged responses to the environmental gradients, but also the intrinsic effects due to seasonal and ontogenetic de...

Background and Aims Several lines of evidence indicate that carbohydrate storage in plant belowground organs might be positively related to genome size because both these plant properties represent resource sinks and can affect cell size, cell cycle time, water-use efficiency, or plant growth. However, plants adapted to disturbance, such as root sp...

Background and Aims: Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) are stored in plants for osmoregulation or resprouting after seasonal rest or damage. In trees, NSC concentration increases with the relative area of parenchyma (storage tissue) in stems and roots. This study aims to test whether there is a correlation between NSC and the anatomical arrangemen...

Andean species of Valeriana are frequently pointed to as an example of island woodiness, i.e. plants with herbaceous ancestors that usually evolve woodier forms on islands. We investigated this phenomenon through morphoanatomical and phylogenetic analyses. Plants were collected in the Páramos of Ecuador and had their vegetative morphology described...

Herbaceous plants can form root systems by investing in one main taproot or many adventitious roots. While monocots have adventitious systems, eudicots can have either type in different species and even within a single species depending on its age, environment, or injury. Although clearly different, we know little about their relationship to ecolog...

The role of storage carbohydrates in plant carbon economy is currently disputed as possibly passive accumulation when other resources are limiting growth, or part of a conservative growth strategy as insurance for regrowth and stress response. One indication may be the fate of carbohydrates in senescing rhizomes, as either translocated to be retain...

Premise: Biomass accumulation over years in vertical stems of trees leads to hypoallometric scaling between stem and leaf biomass within this growth form, while for herbaceous species, biomass allocation between these organ types typically exhibits isometry. However, biomass accumulation in herbs can occur in belowground perennating organs (e.g. r...

The functional diversity of vascular plants is remarkable. Yet, previous studies showed that trait trade-offs constrain aboveground or fine-root trait variation. How do neglected functions such as resprouting and clonal growth, key for fitness maintenance in some plant groups, integrate in these trait frameworks? By using an extensive dataset (> 20...

Ecosystem responses to environmental change are usually studied solely using aboveground (usually leaf) traits. However, belowground plant traits, such as fine roots and coarse belowground organs, likely play a crucial role in ecosystem response, especially under aridifcation. We conducted a literature survey on belowground plant traits along aridi...

Premise: Root-sprouting (RS) is an evolutionary independent way how a plant attains its architecture, alternative to axillary stem branching. RS plants are better adapted to disturbance than non-RS plants, and the vigour of RS is frequently boosted by biomass removal. Nevertheless, RS plants are rarer than plants that are not capable of RS - possi...

Root sprouting (RS) species can regenerate from even small root fragments. The root buds are usually well protected against disturbance because they are deep in the soil, and injury oftentimes boosts root sprouting. Despite these obvious advantages, only 10% of plants exhibit RS ability. Are there specific ecophysiological barriers to RS ability? W...

Community-level studies linking plant mycorrhizal status to environment usually do not account for within-plot mycorrhizal status variability; thus, patterns of plant mycorrhizal status diversity are largely unknown. Here, we assessed the relative importance of within- and between-plot variability components in mycorrhizal status and examined how p...

Background and Aims Plant tissue nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) and genome traits, such as genome size and guanine-cytosine (GC) content, scale with growth or metabolic rates and are linked to plant ecological strategy spectra. Tissue NP stoichiometry and genome traits are reported to affect plant growth, metabolic rates, or ecological strategies...

Aim Species on islands are at high risk of extinction due to environmental changes, including global warming, land‐use alterations and invasions. At local scales, extinctions can be offset by strategies promoting in situ persistence. We explored how persistence‐related traits of plants—that is, linked to belowground resource conservation, growth, s...

One of the strategies employed by plants to counter weed control is to survive and resprout from belowground organs (the tolerance strategy). This strategy is possible because of the existence of specialized organs like rhizomes, roots with adventitious buds, or tubers. These organs have multiple functions: clonal growth, resprouting, and vegetativ...

Estimation of responses of organisms to their environment using experimental manipulations, and comparison of such responses across sets of species, is one of the primary tools in ecology research. The most common approach is to compare the response of a single life stage of species to an environmental factor and use this information to draw conclu...

Aim: Trait-based approaches are being used increasingly in island biogeography, providing key insights into the eco-evolutionary dynamics of insular systems. However, the determinants of persistence of plant species after they have arrived and established on an island remain largely unexplored. Here, we used three edaphic island systems (i.e., habi...

Current climate warming and extended droughts have major impacts on plant performance, with consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. However, unlike in trees, little is known about species-specific responses in grassland plants and the role of their different life histories in mitigating climate change impacts. We studied the climat...

A bud bank is a pool of dormant meristems that enable plants to resprout after injury. While the bud bank on stem organs is established prior to injury as the stem grows, the bud bank on roots is considered at least partly formed as a response to disturbance events. To date, only woody species have been examined, and the establishment of reparative...

Perennial herbaceous plants in seasonal temperate climates must form belowground storage organs to contain carbohydrates for seasonal regrowth and to mitigate disturbance and damage. The factors that dictate the size and turnover of these organs are still little understood. According to the Integrator–Splitter Hypothesis, storage organ persistence...

A longstanding research divide exists in plant ecology: either focus on plant clonality with no ambition to address nonclonal plants, or focus on all plants, ignoring that many ecological processes can be affected by the fact that some plants are clonal while others are not. This gap cascades into a lack of distinction and knowledge about the simil...

Although plant clonality is an important reproductive strategy complementing seed reproduction, their interrelationship is seldom studied. We evaluated how plant clonality, together with plant economics spectrum and architectural constraints, affect the generative reproduction characteristics of co-existing grassland species. For this purpose, we c...

Plants rely on roots for absorption of nutrients from the soil. Differences in traits of fine roots and of the root system in general thus underlie differences among individual species in their ability to live in habitats differing in nutrient status and interactions with other species. Here we examine to what extent structure of the root system is...

In the context of a recent massive increase in research on plant root functions and their impact on the environment, root ecologists currently face many important challenges to keep on generating cutting‐edge, meaningful and integrated knowledge. Consideration of the below‐ground components in plant and ecosystem studies has been consistently calle...

Plant mycorrhizal status (a trait indicating the ability to form mycorrhizas) can be a useful plant trait for predicting changes in vegetation influenced by increased fertility. Mycorrhizal fungi enhance nutrient uptake and are expected to provide a competitive advantage for plants growing in nutrient-poor soils; while in nutrient-rich soils, mycor...

The effects of plants on the biosphere, atmosphere and geosphere are key determinants of terrestrial ecosystem functioning. However, despite substantial progress made regarding plant belowground components, we are still only beginning to explore the complex relationships between root traits and functions. Drawing on the literature in plant physiolo...

The predominance of short-lived species in disturbed habitats supports the view that generative regeneration is an advantageous strategy under these conditions. However, there are short-lived species that survive the destruction of aboveground biomass and resprout from roots. Yet, there is only limited knowledge on the effect of injury on the plant...

PurposePlant belowground storage traits are important for mediating environmental stress, but their role in response to water availability and their coordination with above-ground traits is largely unknown. We predicted a coordination of conservative above- and belowground traits and preferential storage of water-soluble carbohydrates in the drier...

The relationship between species richness and productivity (SRPR) has been a longstudied and hotly debated topic in ecology. Different studies have reported different results with variable shapes (i.e. unimodal, linear) and directions (i.e. positive, negative) of SRPRs depending on spatial grain (i.e. size of sampling unit for species richness), pr...

Toky energie a živin v půdě Většina půdních organismů je závislá na organické hmotě, na sloučeninách vytvo-řených jinými organismy. Tyto látky jsou zdrojem energie pro podstatnou část mi-kroorganismů a pro živočichy (chemotrof-ní organotrofy) a zároveň zdrojem uhlíku pro budování biomasy všech heterotrofů (pro některé mikroorganismy a všechny živoč...

Clonal herbs form belowground organs where they store reserves and bear regenerative buds. Based on these characteristics, clonal herbs may deal with disturbances better than non-clonal herbs, and clonality is seen as an adaptive strategy in disturbed habitats. The advantage of being clonal is likely to be enhanced in stressful conditions where lar...

Classical models of tree architecture are based on the development of aboveground stem branching in an ideal tree from early ontogeny to the first flowering. Such attempts hinder the usage of architectural traits for understanding plant ecology, especially for herbs. In this article, the author discusses belowground plant architecture, especially t...

1. Species extinction risk at local scales can be partially offset by strategies promoting in-situ persistence. We explored how persistence-related traits of clonal and non-clonal plants in temperate dry grasslands respond intra- and interspecifically to variation in environmental conditions (soil, climate) and insularity. 2. We focused on edaphic...

The physical avoidance of overwinter damage is important for determining the success of herbaceous perennial plants in climates with cold winters. Exposure to damaging frost can be affected by contemporary climatic change, which can include an increase in winter air temperatures, changes in precipitation and changes in the timing and severity of wa...

Questions Evaluating seed production as a community function in species-rich temperate grasslands, we asked: (1) Do ancient and restored grasslands differ in the composition of seed-producing species? (2) Do seed-producing species of ancient and restored grasslands differ in their functional traits and habitat origin of their species? (3) How does...

Aim Trait-based approaches are increasingly implemented in island biogeography, providing key insights into the eco-evolutionary dynamics of insular systems. However, what determines persistence of plant species once they have arrived and established in an island remains largely unexplored. Here, we examined links between non-acquisitive persistenc...

Recent climate warming is associated with the increasing magnitude and frequency of extreme events, including heatwaves and drought periods worldwide. Such events can have major effects on the species composition of plant communities, hence on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Here we studied responses of Central European dry grassland plants...

Grassland ecosystems account for approximately 40% of terrestrial biomes globally. These communities are characterized by a large allocation to belowground biomass, often exceeding its aboveground counterpart. However, this biomass investment cannot be entirely attributed to the acquisitive function of roots. Grassland plants also allocate to non‐a...

Background and Aims Root sprouting (RS), i.e. the ability to form adventitious buds on roots, is an important form of clonal growth in a number of species, and serves both as a survival strategy and a means of spatial expansion, particularly in plants growing in severely and recurrently disturbed habitats. Occurrence and/or success of plants in sev...

In temperate perennial grasslands, the recruitment/regeneration of aboveground vegetation predominantly relies on belowground bud bank. Thus, understanding how belowground bud bank density and composition respond to global changes is essential to explain and predict plant community dynamics and ecosystem functions under global change context. The b...

Background and Aims Although the plant economic spectrum seeks to explain resource allocation strategies, carbohydrate storage is often omitted. Belowground storage organs are the centre of herb perennation, yet little is known about the role of their turnover, anatomy, and carbohydrate storage in relation to the aboveground economic spectrum. Met...

The Pladias (Plant Diversity Analysis and Synthesis) Database of the Czech Flora and Vegetation was developed by the Pladias project team in 2014-2018 and has been continuously updated since then. The flora section of the database contains critically revised information on the Czech vascular flora, including 13.6 million plant occurrence records, w...

Plants with clonal growth can produce multiple potentially independent units, termed ramets. Clonal growth can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences, such as by increasing probability of reproduction, space monopolization, and regeneration after injury; and by permitting physiological integration of connected ramets. Although clon...

In herbaceous communities which host many perennial species, belowground clonal organs and traits remain largely overlooked in ecosystem functioning studies. However, the belowground compartment is expected to play a key role as the greatest proportion of biomass is allocated belowground. Our main goal was to test whether including underexplored cl...

Questions Theory suggest that while plant diversity of grasslands decreases in response to increased competition for light, many plant species persist belowground even in the temporary absence of shoots. Thus, we hypothesized that belowground diversity is less affected by increased competition during land‐use change compared to aboveground. Locati...

Herbaceous climbers (vines) represent a growth strategy in which the stem lacks most of its supporting function. This has led to the hypothesis that herbaceous climbers are structural parasites that invest less into stems than self-supporting plants. So far, the support for this idea has been ambiguous, as woody and herbaceous plants have been disc...

Dominants are key species that shape ecosystem functioning. Plant dominance is typically assessed on aboveground features. However, belowground, individual species may not scale proportionally in relation to their aboveground dimension. This is especially important in ecosystems where most biomass is allocated belowground, including grassy and shru...

In the context of a recent massive increase into research on plant root functions and their impact on the environment, root ecologists currently face many important challenges to keep on producing cutting edge, meaningful and integrated knowledge. Consideration of the belowground components in plant and ecosystem studies has been consistently calle...

Organ preformation in overwintering buds of perennial plants has been known for almost two centuries. It is hypothesized to underlie fast growth and early flowering, but its frequency, phylogenetic distribution, and ecological relevance have never been systematically examined. We microscopically observed inflorescence preformation in overwintering...

Clonal plants have more traits enabling individual persistence (larger belowground storage of buds and assimilates), whereas non-clonal plants have more traits enabling population persistence (a higher reliance on regeneration from seeds). This difference presumably makes those groups respond differently to disturbance. We asked whether this differ...

Climate warming may stimulate growth and reproduction in cold‐adapted plants, but also reduce their performance due to warming‐induced drought limitation. We tested this theory using a unique experiment with the alpine forb Rumex alpinus. We examined how climate warming over the past four decades affected its annual rhizome growth, leaf production...

Disturbance is an omnipresent selective factor that shapes plant strategies. While annual species that rely on rapid generative reproduction dominate in habitats frequently affected by severe disturbance, long-lived woody species occupy habitats where the effects of disturbance are weak. These are, however, the extremes in the disturbance gradient....

Root systems show a tremendous diversity both between and within species, suggesting a large variability in plant functioning and effects on ecosystem properties and processes. In recent decades, developments in many areas of root research have brought considerable advances in our understanding of root traits and their contribution to plant and eco...

The study of insular systems has a long history in ecology and biogeography. Island plants often differ remarkably from their noninsular counterparts, constituting excellent models for exploring eco-evolutionary processes. Trait-based approaches can help to answer important questions in island biogeography, yet plant trait patterns on islands remai...

For clonal plants, spatial spread within a site is primarily determined by production of new ramets, which suggests that allocation to this function is a key component of the population and community dynamics of clonal plant species. However, surprisingly few studies, either theoretical or empirical, quantify the amount of resources that is or shou...

Plant traits—the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants—determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research sp...

Premise: The shoot apical meristem (SAM) is the basic determinant of plant body organization, but interspecific variation in SAM shape and its relationship to stem and leaf morphological traits is not well known. Here we tested the hypothesis that different SAM shapes are associated with specific shoot traits of the plant body and examined the phy...

Clonal growth of plants is attained by a number of morphologically different organs (e.g. stolons, rhizomes, and roots), which are not functionally equivalent. Consequently, these clonal growth organ (CGO) types can determine functional traits that are associated with clonality, although little is known about their evolutionary flexibility or the c...

Plant modularity traits relevant to functions of on-spot persistence, space occupancy, resprouting after disturbance, as well as resource storage, sharing, and foraging have been underrepresented in functional ecology so far. This knowledge gap exists for multiple reasons. First, these functions and related traits have been considered less importan...

Recently available extensive datasets on plant distributions across the whole national floras and on functional traits of such floras, and increasing availability of fine-scale information on the abiotic environment make it possible to explore the trends in plant traits across geographical space and explain them as a function of large-scale environ...

Understanding what determine plants ability to survive drought and cold is crucial for predicting how plants may respond to ongoing climate change. Plant survival strategies are usually characterized by morphological and physiological adaptations, while their underlying anatomical settings are largely unknown. Woody angiosperms and herbaceous dicot...

Questions What is the functional trait variation of European temperate grasslands and how does this reflect global patterns of plant form and function? Do habitat specialists show trait differentiation across habitat types? Location Europe. Methods We compiled 18 regeneration and non‐regeneration traits for a continental species pool consisting o...

Background: Below-ground bud banks have experienced much recent interest due to discoveries that they (1) account for the majority of seasonal population renewal in many communities, (2) are crucial to regeneration following disturbance, and (3) have important consequences for plant population dynamics and plant and ecosystem function across a num...

We present data of the grassland restoration experiment performed in the Bílé Karpaty Mts. (White Carpathians, Czech Republic) in dry species-rich meadows. First we harvested seed material in a preserved source meadow (donor site hereafter) by brush harvesting the vegetation once (B1 hereafter), brush harvesting three times during the season (B3 he...

Effective restoration of meadows requires seeds of local provenance to preserve not only the species diversity but also the genetic identity of plant communities. We compared three different methods of seed harvesting from local meadow communities and assessed their efficiency in meadow restoration on ex-arable land. These methods were: brush harve...

Recently, ecologists have rediscovered the importance of belowground plant strategies for ecosystem functioning. However, most of the attention concentrates on acquisition, fine-root traits and mycorrhizal associations. Other, non-absorptive functions (e.g., those related to resprouting and clonal growth abilities exerted by rhizomes and lignotuber...

Motivation: The Tundra Trait Team (TTT) database includes field‐based measurements of key traits related to plant form and function at multiple sites across the tundra biome. This dataset can be used to address theoretical questions about plant strategy and trade‐offs, trait–environment relationships and environmental filtering, and trait variation...

Rhizomes, tubers, bulbs and roots of herbaceous plants are overlooked not only due to their position in the soil but also because they are wrongly considered unimportant. This book focuses on these belowground organs as they are responsible for key ecological functions of temperate herbs, like overwintering, clonal multiplication and resprouting af...

In recent years, plant ecologists have increasingly focused belowground using trait-based approaches that greatly improved our understanding about plant processes and functions. However, most of the attention concentrated on the key function of acquisition, fine-root traits and mycorrhizal associations. Other important functions provided by belowgr...

In recent years, belowground plant ecology has experienced a booming interest. This has resulted in major advances towards a greater understanding of belowground plant and ecosystem functioning focused on fine roots, mycorrhizal associations and nutrient acquisition. Despite this, other important functions (e.g., on‐spot persistence, space occupanc...

Clonality is defined as vegetative reproduction via the production of ramets, which are, at least initially, connected by spacers. In general, there are three types of spacers of two origins. Whereas stolons are aboveground spacers, rhizomes are belowground spacers; however, both of stem origin. The third type of spacers are roots in root-sprouting...

By mainly focusing on leaves and roots, functional ecology has been omitting an important dimension of plant form and function. Horizontal spacers (rooting stems and roots with adventitious shoots) have an important role in competition, multiplication, foraging, and resprouting. In this report, we provide overview of what is known about the functio...

Grime's CSR species life‐strategy theory (competition–stress–ruderality) provides a conceptual framework to classify species into competitive (growing under high productivity, low disturbance), stress‐tolerant (low productivity, low disturbance) and ruderal (high productivity, high disturbance). Importantly, this classification is based on the assu...

Plant functional and community ecology greatly advanced in recent years thanks to development of standardized protocols for collecting plant traits that facilitated global syntheses. These protocols mainly focused on traits related to aboveground plant portions (e.g., leaf, stem, seed) well correlated with certain functions, e.g., reproduction, nut...

Background and aims: The shoot apical meristem (SAM) is the key organizing element in the plant body and is responsible for the core of plant body organization and shape. Surprisingly, there are almost no comparative data that would show links between parameters of the SAM and whole-plant traits as drivers of the plant's response to the environmen...

Recent analyses of plant traits across large sets of species have revolutionized our understanding of plant functional differentiation. However, understanding of ecological relevance of this differentiation is contingent upon knowledge of environmental preferences of species, namely along gradients of disturbance and productivity for which no quant...

Clonal growth occurs in a high proportion of herbaceous plant species, but it is difficult to deal with in demographic transition matrix models. It is primarily a growth process, but in many cases gives rise to new individuals from the viewpoint of plant demography. In the present contribution, we review how clonality is treated in existing demogra...

Background and Aims Below-ground carbohydrate storage is considered an adaptation of plants aimed at regeneration after disturbance. A theoretical model by Iwasa and Kubo was empirically tested which predicted (1) that storage of carbohydrates scales allometrically with leaf biomass and (2) when the disturbance regime is relaxed, the ratio of stor...

On-spot persistence, space occupancy, and recovery after damage are key plant functions largely understudied. Traits relevant to these functions are difficult to assess because of their relationships to plant modularity. We suggest that developing collection protocols for these traits is feasible, and could facilitate their inclusion into global sy...

Plant functional traits are now frequently used instead of species identity to identify how plant species co-exist in assemblages. One notion is that species inhabiting the same environment have more characteristics in common than species from different habitats, leading to different prevailing dominant traits along environmental gradients, and als...

Root sprouting (RS) in plants has been considered a morphological curiosity. However, data of the Central European flora show that RS occurs in 10% of species. These species are independent of a stem-derived bud bank (BB) in their resprouting. As sprouting from roots has been hypothesised to help plants survive disturbance, we used a data set of 29...

Background and aims: Understanding the changes in below-ground bud bank density and composition along a climatic gradient is essential for the exploration of species distribution pattern and vegetation composition in response to climatic changes. Nevertheless, investigations on bud banks along climatic gradients are still scarce. The below-ground...