Meadow snail communities : influence of environmental factors and relation to vegetation
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| Year of publication | 2009 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | This study deals with plant and snail communities of 45 sites in meadow habitats in the White Carpathians (Czech Republic) and follows two main aims. 1) To investigate the influence of selected environmental factors on snail species composition and richness. 2) To compare predictive power of vegetation, Ellenberg plant indicator values and measured environmental variables for explaining variation of snail communities. Detrended correspondence analysis showed that soil calcium content and moisture were the most important factors, which explained most of the variability in the snail as well as plant communities. The interaction of these two factors was even more significant. We found that the main changes of vegetation and snail species composition were highly correlated, and driven by the same environment factors. Using the variance partitioning approach we confirmed a good reliability of Ellenberg indication values and concluded that vegetation composition can be very useful predictor in snail ecology studies. |
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