Landscape structure, habitat properties, species traits or chance: What determines distribution of grassland plants in abandoned fields?

Semi-natural grasslands are among the most threatened habitats in Europe, endangered mainly by cessation of former management practices and conversion into other types of land use. Extensive research has been carried out in European grasslands in last decades, to explain origins of diversity and to provide guidelines for its conservation. However, the very slow response of perennial plants to landscape changes often impedes to accurately evaluate why species occur just where they occur and not elsewhere. Abandoned fields are perceived as potential habitats for species from declining grasslands. Indeed, many species are able to spontaneously colonise abandoned fields, but many other species are absent from communities that develop there. An important question remains what limits their successful establishment. By answering this question, we can gain also important insights into factors determining species distribution in grasslands because colonization of recently abandoned fields by grassland species is the ongoing process which is not obscured by historical changes in landscape structure. The very basic aim of this thesis was to evaluate the status quo of dry grassland plants in fields abandoned in last two decades. And in the second step, to identify what are the main constrains of successful..