Vojtech Novotny

The Czech Academy of Sciences | AVCR · Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology

The El Niño 2015 event, most extreme since 1997, led to severe droughts in tropical wet Papua New Guinea (PNG), reducing May to October dry season rainfall by 75% in the lowlands and 25% in the highlands. Such droughts are likely to have significant effects on terrestrial ecosystems, but they have been poorly explored in Papua New Guinea. Here, we...

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a...

Drought has a significant impact on plant–insect interactions by altering plant survival, growth, leaf quality, and defense traits. Tropical plants are particularly vulnerable to water depression because of shallow root depth. In the context of climate change, drought events are expected to increase in frequency and intensity; however, their impact...

Global biodiversity gradients are generally expected to reflect greater species replacement closer to the equator. However, empirical validation of global biodiversity gradients largely relies on vertebrates, plants, and other less diverse taxa. Here we assess the temporal and spatial dynamics of global arthropod biodiversity dynamics using a beta-...

The ecological factors driving specialisation in species interaction networks along environmental gradients at large spatial scales are poorly understood. Although such drivers can have synergistic impacts, previous work has mainly assessed effects of network type and the abiotic environment separately. We conducted a meta-analysis of existing netw...

Insect herbivores and their parasitoids play a crucial role in terrestrial trophic interactions in tropical forests. These interactions occur across the entire vertical gradient of the forest. This study compares how caterpillar communities, and their parasitism rates, vary across vertical strata and between caterpillar defensive strategies in a se...

Conserving plant diversity is integral to sustainable forest management. This study aims at diversifying tools to map spatial distribution of species richness. We develop a sampling strategy of using rapid assessments by local communities to gather prior information on species richness distribution to drive census cell selection by sampling with co...

Polyphagous insect herbivores feed on multiple host‐plant species and face a highly variable chemical landscape. Comparative studies of polyphagous herbivore metabolism across a range of plants is an ideal approach for exploring how intra‐ and interspecific chemical variation shapes species interactions. We used polyphagous caterpillars of Lymantri...

Mycorrhizae, a form of plant–fungal symbioses, mediate vegetation impacts on ecosystem functioning. Climatic effects on decomposition and soil quality are suggested to drive mycorrhizal distributions, with arbuscular mycorrhizal plants prevailing in low-latitude/high-soil-quality areas and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) plants in high-latitude/low-soil-qual...

The majority of multi-cellular terrestrial life is found in tropical forests and is either an invertebrate or a plant: for decades ecologists have sought to understand why. As global change erodes the list of extant species on our planet quantifying what species remain, along with their origins and ecology, contributes to our ability to preserve ec...

Sustainable forest management needs information on spatial distribution of species richness. The objectives of this study were to understand whether knowledge, method, and effort of a rapid assessment affected accuracy and consistency in mapping species richness. A simulation study was carried out with nine 25–50 ha census plots located in tropical...

Insect herbivores and their parasitoids play a crucial role in terrestrial trophic interactions in tropical forests. These interactions occur across the entire vertical gradient of the forest. This study compares how caterpillar communities, and their parasitism rates, vary across vertical strata and between caterpillar defensive strategies in a se...

One mechanism proposed to explain high species diversity in tropical systems is strong negative conspecific density dependence (CDD), which reduces recruitment of juveniles in proximity to conspecific adult plants. Although evidence shows that plant-specific soil pathogens can drive negative CDD, trees also form key mutualisms with mycorrhizal fung...

Objectives. Determine community needs and perspectives as part of planning health service incorporation into Wanang Conservation Area, in support of locally driven sustainable development. Design. Clinical and rapid anthropological assessment (individual primary care assessments, key informant (KI) interviews, focus groups (FGs), ethnography) with...

Objectives. Determine community needs and perspectives as part of planning health service incorporation into Wanang Conservation Area. Design. Clinical and rapid anthropological assessment (individual primary care assessments, Key Informant [KI] interviews, Focus Groups [FGs], ethnography) with parallel treatment of urgent cases.Setting. Wanang (po...

The tropical rainforest elevation gradients, extending from lowlands to treeline, often represent global maxima of biodiversity and are models for community studies. We surveyed geometrid moths along a complete rainforest gradient from 200 to 3700 m asl. in Papua New Guinea. The 16,424 moths collected with light traps represented 1102 species, a hi...

This study investigates the species diversity, distribution, and community composition of birds in different forest types in Papua New Guinea in response to environmental factors. The study further focused on individual feeding guilds. The analyzed data originate from 13 sites across the country. Each site was surveyed by standardized point count m...

PhD Studentship in Tropical Ecology Rainforest succession trajectories along an elevation gradient in times of climate change: a community-transplantation experiment in New Guinea We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate to join a project exploring plant-insect food webs in tropical rainforests in Papua New Guinea, using manipulative experimen...

In the face of increasing anthropogenic disturbance, the effects of climate change on rainforest regeneration become important for maintaining tropical biodiversity and ecosystem services. We propose a new experiment that simulates climate change by transplanting whole plant communities in their seed bank stage to different elevations while manipul...

The study examines one of the most fundamental, yet poorly understood patterns of global biodiversity distribution: How can so many species coexist in a tropical forest? This key question of current ecology will be studied using quantitative surveys of plant-herbivore-parasitoid food webs within paired sets of tropical and temperate forests from si...

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ecology: Plant-Insect Food Webs Novotny Lab, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic Salary: Euro 25,000 pa Tenure: 3 years (performance review after the first year) Location: Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic [local living costs = 50% of UK costs] We are seeking a highly motivated and produ...

Hunting, as a component of traditional indigenous livelihoods, can play either positive or negative role in biodiversity conservation by maintaining traditional lifestyles that are conducive to conservation or by endangering vulnerable hunted species. Quantitative data on changes in hunting skills in indigenous communities driven by education, empl...

This study appraises the richness of nonwoody species (ferns, herbs, lianas, palms, and shrubs) in 31 sites across undisturbed and disturbed forests in the lowland of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and at montane forest sites at 2,700 m a.s.l. The assessment was conducted following the PNG National Forest Inventory protocol. The results indicate that with...

Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., what recruits under what) shape the composition, diversity, and structure of plant communities. Despite the huge body of knowledge on the mechanisms underlying recruitment interactions among species, we still know little about the structure of the recruitment networks emerging in ecological communities. Modelin...

Riparian forests serve as important habitats that enhance diversity of bird species and perform crucial ecosystem functions in tropical forest landscapes. We compared the community structure (represented by functional trait composition) and diversity (represented by Shannon index) of birds in riparian and upland zones in a semi-continuous primary r...

Plant recruitment interactions (i.e., who recruits under whom) between 3,318 vascular plant species across the globe

BACKGROUND Biodiversity protection is fundamental to human wellbeing, and, in turn, serving human health in medically underserved areas can sometimes strengthen conservation. We aimed to collaboratively map the evidence on projects worldwide that are, or have been, providing health services with the intention of producing conservation outcomes in a...

Global gradients in species biodiversity are expected to reflect tighter packing of species closer to the equator. Yet, empirical validation of these patterns has so far focused on less diverse taxa, with comparable assessments of mega-diverse groups historically constrained by the taxonomic impediment. Here we assess the temporal and spatial turno...

Aim: Global gradients in species biodiversity may or may not be associated with greater species replacement closer to the equator. Yet, empirical validation of these patterns has so far focused on less diverse taxa, with comparable assessments of mega-diverse groups historically constrained by the taxonomic impediment. Location: Global Time period:...

Over the past decades, elevational gradients have become a powerful tool with which to understand the underlying cause(s) of biodiversity. The Mt. Wilhelm elevational transect is one such example, having been used to study the birds, insects, and plants of Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, a survey of mammals from this forest elevational transect...

Insect herbivores have the potential to consume large amounts of plant tissue in tropical forests, but insectivorous vertebrates effectively control their abundances, indirectly increasing plant fitness accordingly. Despite several studies already sought understanding of the top‐down effects on arthropod community structure and herbivory, such stud...

Insect herbivores have evolved a broad spectrum of adaptations in response to the diversity of chemical defences employed by plants. Here we focus on two species of New Guinean Asota and determine how these specialist moths deal with the leaf alkaloids of their fig (Ficus) hosts. As each focal Asota species is restricted to one of three chemically...

Trees can emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) when under attack by herbivores, and these signals can also be detected by natural enemies and neighbouring trees. There is still limited knowledge of intra- and inter-specific communication in diverse habitats. We studied the effects of induced VOC emissions by three Ficus species on predation on th...

Piper aduncum, a tree species native to the Neotropics, has been introduced to other tropical regions and successfully invades secondary forest in fallow land after small scale slash-and-burn agriculture in Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, the effect of P. aduncum invasion on soil chemical properties as well as soil biota remains poorly understood....

The El Nino 2015 event, most extreme since 1997, led to severe droughts in tropical wet Papua New Guinea (PNG), reducing May to October dry season rainfall by - 75% in the lowlands and 25% in the highlands. Such droughts are likely to have significant effects on terrestrial ecosystems, but they have been poorly explored in Papua New Guinea. Here we...

Metazoan metabarcoding is emerging as an essential strategy for inventorying biodiversity, with diverse projects currently generating massive quantities of community-level data. The potential for integrating across such data sets offers new opportunities to better understand biodiversity and how it might respond to global change. However, large-sca...

Insect herbivores have evolved a broad spectrum of adaptations in response to the diversity of chemical defences employed by plants. Here we focus on two species of New Guinean Asota and determine how these specialist moths deal with the leaf alkaloids of their Ficus fig hosts. As each focal Asota species is restricted to one of three chemically di...

This study aims to analyze the occurrence and composition of ferns along an elevational gradient and among different forest types and disturbance regimes in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The assessment was conducted using the monitoring protocol of the National Forest Inventory. The investigation revealed a high richness of ferns, with 122 species or mor...

The relative roles of plants competing for resources versus top‐down control of vegetation by herbivores, in turn impacted by predators, during early stages of tropical forest succession remain poorly understood. Here we examine the impact of insectivorous birds, bats, and ants exclusion on arthropods communities on replicated 5 × 5 m of pioneering...

Reproductive isolation in response to divergent selection is often mediated via third‐party interactions. Under these conditions, speciation is inextricably linked to ecological context. We present a novel framework for understanding arthropod speciation as mediated by Wolbachia, a microbial endosymbiont capable of causing host cytoplasmic incompat...

As the major group of herbivorous insects, moths are highly significant in natural ecosystems. In collaboration with the Papua New Guinea (PNG) multipurpose National Forest Inventory (NFI) survey, this study investigates the species richness, distribution and community composition of Geometrid moths (Lepidoptera) in PNG’s tropical forests and analy...

The construction of shelters on plants by arthropods might influence other organisms via changes in colonization, community richness, species composition, and functionality. Arthropods, including beetles, caterpillars, sawflies, spiders, and wasps often interact with host plants via the construction of shelters, building a variety of structures suc...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to aridity, high temperatures and climate variability might find shelter in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf rolls built by arthropods. To explore how the importance of leaf shelters for terrestrial arthropods changes with lati...

Tree size shapes forest carbon dynamics and determines how trees interact with their environment, including a changing climate. Here, we conduct the first global analysis of among‐site differences in how aboveground biomass stocks and fluxes are distributed with tree size. We analyzed repeat tree censuses from 25 large‐scale (4–52 ha) forest plots...

Over the past decades, elevational gradients have become a powerful tool with which to understand the underlying cause(s) of biodiversity. The Mt. Wilhelm elevational transect is one such example, having been used to study the birds, insects, and plants of Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, a survey of mammals from this forest elevational transect wa...

Syzygium is the largest woody genus of flowering plants in the world and one of the most important components of the forest vegetation in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Although the systematics of the genus is improving, a comprehensive appraisal of the environmental features and gradients of its species is still lacking. Our work aims to fill this gap by...

National Forest Inventory (NFI) protocols have traditionally been designed to assess land coverage and the production value of forest. We propose that this approach needs to evolve toward multipurpose resource survey with broader scope, including data on plant and animal biodiversity, forest carbon pools, and carbon sequestration, given the role of...

Bats represent an important, but poorly known component of mammal diversity in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Our surveys in two altitudinal rainforest gradients recorded 43 bat species of which six ( Dobsonia minor , D. praedatrix , Hipposideros calcaratus , H. maggietaylorae , Miniopterus australis , Miniopterus sp.) fell outside of their known altitudi...

Previous studies have provided important scientific information on ant species richness and composition relating to the effects of elevation, sampling approaches, stratification, and forest succession. Yet, they have primarily focused on single sites or regions. Knowledge of ant ecology should also include the impact of disturbance in various fores...

The Nature Index and the Web of Science databases are used to analyse the publication patterns in life sciences in Papua New Guinea, aiming to identify the ways of improving research output of the country.

New Guinea Binatang Research Center: report in activities in 2020

Pictorial report on the conservation and biodiversity research along the Mt. Wilhelm ekevation rainforest gradient by the New Guinea Binatang Research Center.

In the tropics, antagonistic seed predation networks may have different properties than mutualistic pollination and seed dispersal networks, but the former have been considerably less studied. We tested whether the structure of antagonistic tripartite networks composed of host plants, insects developing within seeds and fruits, and their insect par...

Understanding spatiotemporal trends on insect-plant interaction networks is essential to unveil the ecological and evolutionary processes driving herbivore specialisation. However, community studies accounting for temporal dynamics in host-plant specialisation of herbivorous insects are surprisingly scarce. Here, we investigated how seasonality aff...

The community composition of insect herbivores is largely shaped by host–plant phylogeny and functional traits. These effects differ between herbivores due at least in part to varying levels of diet specialisation. Distinguishing between herbivores with differing specialisation is therefore necessary to understand the roles of host phylogeny and tr...

Elucidating dynamics of soil microbial communities after disturbance is crucial for understanding ecosystem restoration and sustainability. However, despite the widespread practice of swidden agriculture in tropical forests, knowledge about microbial community succession in this system is limited. Here, amplicon sequencing was used to investigate e...

Significance Around the world, more than 7,000 languages are spoken, most of them by small populations of speakers in the tropics. Globalization puts small languages at a disadvantage, but our understanding of the drivers and rate of language loss remains incomplete. When we tested key factors causing language attrition among Papua New Guinean stud...

Tropical forests are notable for their high species diversity, even on small spatial scales, and right-skewed species and size abundance distributions. The role of individual species as drivers of the spatial organization of diversity in these forests has been explained by several hypotheses and processes, for example, stochastic dilution, negative...

Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) associations are critical for host-tree performance. However, how mycorrhizal associations correlate with the latitudinal tree beta-diversity remains untested. Using a global dataset of 45 forest plots representing 2,804,270 trees across 3840 species, we test how AM and EcM trees contribute to t...

While there are numerous studies of diversity patterns both within local communities and at regional scales, the intermediate scale of tens to thousands of km2 is often neglected. Here we present detailed local data on plant communities (using 20×20 m plots) and bird communities (using point counts) for a 50 ha ForestGEO plot in lowland rainforest...

Microbial interconnections in soil are pivotal to ecosystem services and restoration. However, little is known about how soil microbial interconnections respond to slash-and-burn agriculture and to the subsequent ecosystem restoration after the practice. Here, we used amplicon sequencing and co-occurrence network analyses to explore the interconnec...

Papua New Guinea is home to >10% of the world’s languages and rich and varied biocultural knowledge, but the future of this diversity remains unclear. We measured language skills of 6,190 students speaking 392 languages (5.5% of the global total) and modelled their future trends, using individual-level variables characterizing family language use,...

The ant mosaic is a concept of the non-random spatial distribution of individual ant species in trees built upon the assumption of interspecific behavioural associations. However, colony identity and environmental variance may also play a role in species distribution. Here we assess the presence of ant mosaics in a primary forest ecosystem and whet...

Barriers to gene-flow within populations, typically in response to divergent selection, are often mediated via third-party interactions. Under these conditions speciation is inextricably linked to ecological context. We present a novel framework for studying arthropod speciation as mediated by Wolbachia , a microbial endosymbiont capable of causing...

Barriers to gene-flow within populations, typically in response to divergent selection, are often mediated via third-party interactions. Under these conditions speciation is inextricably linked to ecological context. We present a novel framework for studying arthropod speciation as mediated by Wolbachia , a microbial endosymbiont capable of causing...

Barriers to gene-flow within populations, typically in response to divergent selection, are often mediated via third-party interactions. Under these conditions speciation is inextricably linked to ecological context. We present a novel framework for studying arthropod speciation as mediated by Wolbachia, a microbial endosymbiont capable of causing...

Tropical mountains encompass a wide range of environmental conditions and are useful models for studying drivers of community structure. Invertebrate species richness and abundance show various elevational patterns. However, the drivers of these differences are not well understood, although microhabitat complexity is potentially important. We studi...

Host-specific natural enemies limit the abundance of common species. This can increase host community diversity, since no single species dominates, and is known as the ‘Janzen-Connell effect.’ Evidence is now accumulating that host-specific mutualists can increase abundances of particular host species, hence reducing community diversity, comprising...

Context Swidden agriculture (a type of small-scale agriculture) is crucial to the livelihood and food security of millions of people in tropical regions. Social-ecological changes, including population growth and anti-swidden policies, are putting pressure on the existing swidden system to increase agricultural productivity in a sustainable way. En...

Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to drought, high temperatures and climate variability might persist in microclimatic refuges, such as leaf shelters built by arthropods. We conducted a distributed experiment across an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient to explore how...

High‐throughput sequencing (HTS) is increasingly being used for the characterisation and monitoring of biodiversity. If applied in a structured way, across broad geographic scales, it offers the potential for a much deeper understanding of global biodiversity through the integration of massive quantities of molecular inventory data generated indepe...

ForestGEO is a network of scientists and long-term forest dynamics plots (FDPs) spanning the Earth's major forest types. ForestGEO's mission is to advance understanding of the diversity and dynamics of forests and to strengthen global capacity for forest science research. ForestGEO is unique among forest plot networks in its large-scale plot dimens...

1. Assemblages of insect herbivores are structured by plant traits such as nutrient content, secondary metabolites, physical traits, and phenology. Many of these traits are phylogenetically conserved, implying a decrease in trait similarity with increasing phylogenetic distance of the host plant taxa. Thus, a metric of phylogenetic distances and re...

1. Assemblages of insect herbivores are structured by plant traits such as nutrient content, secondary metabolites, physical traits, and phenology.

• Papua New Guinea (PNG) has the greatest diversity of dacine fruit fly species (Diptera: Tephritidae: Dacinae) in the world, many of which are significant agricultural pests. • Although their taxonomy is relatively well known, there is limited research on their geographical and elevational distribution. • We undertook a survey of PNG's fruit fly f...

The SURFACES project is integrating action on good health and wellbeing [Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3] and conservation of life on land (SDG 15) in the threatened rainforests of Papua New Guinea (PNG), and mapping evidence of similar projects worldwide. Our approach is framed by Planetary Health, aiming to safeguard both human health and th...

Introduction Our project follows community requests for health service incorporation into conservation collaborations in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea (PNG). This protocol is for health needs assessments, our first step in coplanning medical provision in communities with no existing health data. Methods and analysis The study includes clinic...

In arthropod community ecology, species richness studies tend to be prioritised over those investigating patterns of abundance. Consequently, the biotic and abiotic drivers of arboreal arthropod abundance are still relatively poorly known. In this cross-continental study, we employ a theoretical framework in order to examine patterns of covariance...