Land Abandonment in the Mediterranean – Effects on Butterfly Communities with Respect to Life History Traits Rndr. Jana Šlanc
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School of Doctoral Studies in Biological Sciences University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Science Land Abandonment in the Mediterranean – Effects on Butterfly Communities with Respect to Life History Traits Ph.D. Thesis RNDr. Jana Šlancarová Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Martin Konvička, Ph.D. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Czech Republic České Budějovice 2016 This thesis should be cited as: Šlancarová, J., 2016: Land Abandonment in the Mediterranean – Effects on Butterfly Communities with Respect to Life History Traits. Ph.D. Thesis Series, No. 4. University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Science, School of Doctoral Studies in Biological Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic, 140 pp. Annotation This thesis deals with the effects of changing land use, following landscape abandonment, on butterfly communities in the Mediterranean Basin. It consists of three case studies. The first focuses on the effects of forest encroachment on butterflies in the Southern Balkans; the second studies butterfly communities in Portuguese 'montados' and the third explores demography and life histories of three co-occurring Papilionidae butterfly species (Archon apollinus, Zerynthia polyxena and Zerynthia cerisy) in Greek Thrace. The results describe shifts in butterfly communities, detectable even at the level of individual species life history traits, with increasing forest encroachment. The preference of range-restricted Mediterranean endemics for either grasslands or open woodland formations contributes to falsifying the forested Mediterranean hypothesis, favouring a hypothesis of finely grained landscape mosaic instead. This mosaic is currently threatened by land use change and biodiversity homogenisation. Maintaining habitat and landscape heterogeneity is crucial for conserving the Mediterranean biodiversity hot-spot. Declaration [in Czech] Prohlašuji, že svoji disertační práci jsem vypracovala samostatně pouze s použitím pramenů a literatury uvedených v seznamu citované literatury. Prohlašuji, že v souladu s § 47b zákona č. 111/1998 Sb. v platném znění souhlasím se zveřejněním své disertační práce, a to v úpravě vzniklé vypuštěním vyznačených částí archivovaných Přírodovědeckou fakultou elektronickou cestou ve veřejně přístupné části databáze STAG provozované Jihočeskou univerzitou v Českých Budějovicích na jejích internetových stránkách, a to se zachováním mého autorského práva k odevzdanému textu této kvalifikační práce. Souhlasím dále s tím, aby toutéž elektronickou cestou byly v souladu s uvedeným ustanovením zákona č. 111/1998 Sb. zveřejněny posudky školitele a oponentů práce i záznam o průběhu a výsledku obhajoby kvalifikační práce. Rovněž souhlasím s porovnáním textu mé kvalifikační práce s databází kvalifikačních prací Theses.cz provozovanou Národním registrem vysokoškolských kvalifikačních prací a systémem na odhalování plagiátů. V Českých Budějovicích 2. června 2016 ..................................................... Jana Šlancarová This thesis originated from a partnership of Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, and Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v. v i., supporting doctoral studies in the Entomology study programme. Financial support The studies were financially supported by Grant Agency of the University of South Bohemia (144/2010/P, 114/2012/P, 137/2013/P, 168/2013/P), Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (P505-10-2167), Czech Ministry of Education (168/2013/P), Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PRAXIS XXI no. 9101/96) and by The Xerxes Society and Explorer Club. Illustrations by Martina Slouková on book cover are freely inspired by photos by Alain Dervieux, published in Debussche M, Lepart J, Dervieux A. 1999. Mediterranean landscape changes: evidence from old postcards. Global Ecology and Biogeography 8: 3-15. Acknowledgements I sincerely thank my supervisor, Martin Konvička, for believing in me, for all the adventures in the field, which he definitely attracts, for his abstractedness, which increases the “frustration tolerance level”, right Alenka? ;-), and for those hours and hours and hours of drinking coffee, smoking and Facebook wool-gathering that significantly improved all manuscripts including this thesis. Earnest, thanks for bringing me into the world of butterflies ;o) I would particularly like to thank Alenka Bartoňová for her continuous presence in the field and especially for her loyalty. Pavel Vrba, Michal Plátek, Michal Zapletal gave me the best preparation for exams. “Dědku,” (Milan Kotilínek), without you, it would have been impossible to survive that unbearable week of heat in the Peloponnesse. Thanks for your help to all of you, who were with us in the field, I hope you enjoyed it ;o) Many thanks also to all Greek gods who guarded for centuries the Greek sights, we have seen through our trips, and in particular to Zeus for giving us the amazing opportunity to climb Olympus. I am much obliged to all people in Kirki village (Petros, Bari and their families), who made the first two years of my field work so nice, in reality, they are responsible for my love of Greece and Greek people. I am also thankful to Dita Horázná for such a friendly office environment and for all the help and dinners during the years; to Kamil Zimmermann for his guidance in the time of my butterfly “childhood”; to Enrique and Kiki for those nice months or days in Madrid and Papingo. Many thanks belong also to Petr Šmilauer, who advised on statistical data handling and to “MáSlo” (Martina Slouková) for those “just in time” illustrations :-). Most importantly, I would like to thank to Lipulín (Petr Lipár) for his continual love, patience and standing up for me, whenever I need it; to my parents for their long-term support (“Mami, tati, tohle je poděkování Vám :-)”) and to my sister Věra for that bet, I still hope I’ll win (it’s a pity we can’t remember about what it was placed :-)). List of papers and author’s contribution The thesis is based on the following papers (listed chronologically): I. Šlancarová, J., Vrba, P., Plátek, M., Zapletal, M., Spitzer, L., Konvička, M., 2015. Co-occurrence of three Aristolochia-feeding Papilionids (Archon apollinus, Zerynthia polyxena and Zerynthia cerisy) in Greek Thrace. Journal of Natural History 49, 1825-1848 (IF = 0.954). Jana Šlancarová participated in experiment preparation, led the data collection in the field, was responsible for data assembly and for statistical analysis, as well as for writing the manuscript with contribution of MK. II. Šlancarová, J., García-Pereira, P., Faltýnek Fric, Z., Romo, H., García- Barros, E., 2015. Butterflies in Portuguese 'montados': relationships between climate, land use and life-history traits. Journal of Insect Conservation 19, 823-836 (IF = 1.911). Jana Šlancarová participated in preparing of butterfly life-history trait dataset, was responsible for statistical analysis and writing the manuscript with contribution of EGB and ZFF. III. Šlancarová, J., Bartoňová, A., Zapletal, M., Kotilínek, M., Faltýnek Fric, Z., Micevski, N., Kati, V., Konvička, M., Life History Traits Reflect Changes in Mediterranean Butterfly Communities due to Forest Encroachment. PLoS One 11 (3), e0152026 (IF = 3.702). Jana Šlancarová participated in experiment preparation, led the data collection in the field, was responsible for data assembly and analysing majority of data, as well as for writing the manuscript with contribution of MK. Co-author agreement Martin Konvička, the supervisor of Ph.D. thesis and co-author of paper in Chapter II and III, fully acknowledges the contribution of Jana Šlancarová as the first author and her major contributions as stated above. ............................................................ doc. Mgr. Martin Konvička, Ph.D. Zdeněk Faltýnek Fric, the co-author of paper in Chapter IV, fully acknowledges the contribution of Jana Šlancarová as the first author of paper in Chapter IV and her major contributions as stated above. ............................................................... RNDr. Zdeněk Faltýnek Fric, Ph.D. Contents CHAPTER I Introduction 1 CHAPTER II Life History Traits Reflect Changes in 19 Mediterranean Butterfly Communities due to Forest Encroachment CHAPTER III Co-occurrence of three Aristolochia-feeding 53 papilionids (Archon apollinus, Zerynthia polyxena and Zerynthia cerisy) in Greek Thrace CHAPTER IV Butterflies in Portuguese 'montados': 89 relationships between climate, land use and life-history traits CHAPTER V Summary of results and future 123 perspectives APPENDIX Author’s Curriculum Vitae 135 CHAPTER I CHAPTER I Introduction Archon apollinus (Herbst, 1789) Page | 1 CHAPTER I The Mediterranean Basin has been cradle to the birth, blooming, and collapse of some of the largest and most powerful civilisations in the world (Blondel 2006). These societies have impacted biota and ecosystems everywhere in the basin for so long that some authors claim that a complex ‘co-evolution’ has shaped the interactions between these ecosystems and humans (e.g. di Castri 1981; Lepart and Debussche 1992). The high diversity of mountain ranges, gorges, peninsulas and islands creates more complex climatic patterns than anywhere in Europe (Metzger et al. 2005). There is an exceptionally high endemism rate, species richness and threat degree (Myers et al. 2000). These have all played a role in making the Mediterranean Basin one of the world’s biodiversity hot-spots (Myers et al. 2000; Thompson