Species diversity, distribution and interspecific and intraspecific variation in performance of dry grassland species

In fragmented landscapes, survival and dynamics of plant species may be determined not only by local habitat conditions but also by landscape structure and its changes over time as well as by species life-history traits and their local population dynamics. Understanding the factors and processes determining diversity, distribution and variation in performance in species of fragmented habitats is thus very complex. Most previous studies focused only on some particular factors. However, studies that explored the relative importance of all these factors for species diversity and composition are rare, especially in dry grassland communities. Also studies exploring variation in species performance in relation to landscape fragmentation usually deal only with a single species and were often done in different study systems making generalization difficult. The aim of this Ph.D. thesis was to explore factors that are responsible for species diversity, distribution and interspecific and intraspecific variation in performance of dry grassland species occurring in a system of dry grassland-like forest openings in the forested landscape. In Chapter 1 I examined the effect of current and past landscape structure and local habitat conditions on species richness at dry grassland-like forest openings and assessed..