Island Biology conference in Réunion island

The 3rd Conference on Island Biology was organised at the University of Saint Denis, La Réunion. Islands are very unique, special and fragile ecosystems, including classical oceanic islands or continental habitat islands with various age and size. Their common point is the uniqueness, isolation and vulnerability which features were discussed in many sections of the meeting. The aim of the conference was to provide a forum for the researchers dealing with various aspects of islands, from dispersal ecology and invasion biology to evolutionary biology. Videos about some lectures can be found in this link - we highly recommend the brilliant plenary lecture of Vojtech Novotny about tropical ecology in Papua New Guinea.

The presentations highlighted that islands harbour several endemic species and are often considered as biodiversity hotspots. However due to their isolation, several functional groups are missing (e.g. pollinators, seed dispersers, carnivores). Their small area, isolation and the functional disharmony makes the biota of islands especially vulnerable to the anthropogenic habitat transformation activities and especially to the human-mediated dispersal and establishment of non-native species, which can later become invasive.

The conference venue: The campus of the University of La Réunion, Saint Denis - like a tropical paradise.

We the Hungarian participants presented our results about the ecology of terrestrial habitat islands. Our poster about the threats of human-mediated seed dispersal on the flora of islands was awarded with the second prize in the poster competition :)

These are the titles of our presentations:

Deák, B., Valkó, O., Török, P., Kelemen, A., Tóthmérész, B.: Diversity of grassland habitat islands: habitat and landscape filters of plant establishment in agricultural landscapes. (oral presentation)

Tóthmérész, B., Hüse, B., Valkó, O., Katona, É., Deák, B.: Grassland habitat islands in urban areas: testing ecological theories. (oral presentation)

Valkó, O., Lukács, K., Deák, B., Kiss, R., Miglécz, T., Tóth, K., Godó, L., Sonkoly, J., Radócz, S., Kelemen, A., Tóthmérész, B.: Alien species on tourists' cloths as novel threats for island floras: Human-dispersed seeds survive and can disperse after laundry washing. (poster)

During the mid-coference excursion and during our holiday after the conference we had the possibility to explore some of the natural beauties of this very interesting island. In the next blog post, we will share some of these experiences :)

The conference village was a very nice place where we could interact with local nature conservationists.

The conference dinner took place in a wonderful villa in Saint Denis.

Colonial atmosphere near the city centre of Saint Denis.

Monument of the first World War.

The Botanical Garden of Saint Denis has a tropical and French character at the same time.

Rue de Paris is one of the most beautiful streets in Saint Denis, with many villas and palaces.

Sunset on the Barachois, the coastal promenade.

The Common Myna (Acridotheres tristis) is among the most common bird species.

A Heliotropium tree - Heliotropium foertherianum.

EDGG Special Issue in Hacquetia

A special issue dedicated to the biodiversity and conservation of Eurasian grasslands has been published on behalf of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) in the journal Hacquetia. Hacquetia is an international journal of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, which regularly publishes special issues in cooperation with the EDGG. I have been serving as editor-in-chief in these special issues since 2016.

The papers in this special issue cover a wide range of grassland ecosystems from mountain dry grasslands to lowland loess grasslands, feathergrass steppes and wet grasslands, and focus on the biodiversity values and conservation issues of Palaearctic grasslands. We believe that this compilation will contribute to a better understanding of the ecology of grasslands and support their more effective conservation.

Two papers of the special issue focus on the conservation values of ancient steppic burial mounds (kurgans). The paper of Balázs Deák introduces the Eurasian Kurgan Database which is a new citizen science tool for collecting and sharing data on these important sites (Deák et al. 2019). The paper of Csaba Tóth provides a complex analysis of the geomorphology, soil, flora and fauna of representative mounds in Hungary (Tóth et al. 2019). Anyway, the mounds play a central role in the special issue and they appear also on the cover page :) 

You can read interesting papers about dry grasslands of the Upper Rhone Valley (Dengler et al. 2019a), grazing preferences of water buffaloes in wet grasslands (Tsiobani et al. 2019) and about the effect of wildfires on the steppic arthropod assemblages (Polchaninova et al. 2019). The special issue also includes a report on the activities of the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (Dengler et al. 2019b) and an editorial paper (Valkó et al. 2019).

The cover photo of the special issue showing that in the intensively used agricultural landscapes, kurgans harbour the last remnants of the steppes. The kurgan on the picture is situated in the Plovdiv region of Bulgaria, and we found several interesting steppic plant on it, such as Goniolimon sp., Elymus elongatus and Ranunculus illyricus (photo by Balázs Deák).

Hacquetia is an international journal indexed on Scopus. It is an attractive publication platform as it has an increasing Cite Score and all articles and colour illustrations are published free and open access. In the EDGG-edited special features we welcome submissions of both botanical and zoological papers related to the biodiversity values or conservation issues of Palaearctic grasslands. The next special issue is planned to be published in December 2020. The call for papers will be published soon.

The papers of the current special issue can be downloaded from the journal homepage.

Please find below the citations of the papers in the current special issue.

Valkó, O., Labadessa, R., Palpurina, S., Burrascano, S., Ushimaru, A. & Venn, S. (2019): Conservation and diversity of Palaearctic grasslands – Editorial to the 5th EDGG special issue in Hacquetia. Hacquetia 18(2): 149-152.

Dengler, J., Widmer, S., Staubli, E., Babbi, M., Gehler, J., Hepenstrick, D., Bergamini, A., Billeter, R., Boch, S., Rohrer, S. & Dembicz, I. (2019a): Dry grasslands of the central valleys of the Alps from a European perspective: the example of Ausserberg (Valais, Switzerland). Hacquetia 18 (2): 161–183.

Dengler, J., Aleksanyan, A., Ambarlı, D., Biurrun, I., Dembicz, I., Kuzemko, A., Török, P., Venn, S. & Vrahnakis, M. (2019b): The Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) in 2018–2019. Hacquetia 18(2): 153-160.

Deák, B., Tóth, C., Bede, Á., Apostolova, I., Bragina, T.M., Báthori, F. & Bán, M. 2019: Eurasian Kurgan Database – a citizen science tool for conserving grasslands on historical sites. Hacquetia 18 (2): 185–193.

Tóth, Cs. A., Deák, B., Nyilas, I., Bertalan, L., Valkó, O. & Novák, T. 2019: Iron age burial mounds as refugia for steppe specialist plants and invertebrates – case study from the Zsolca mounds (NE Hungary). Hacquetia 18 (2): 195–206.

Tsiobani, E. T., Yiakoulaki, M. D. & Menexes, G. 2019: Seasonal variation in water buffaloes’ diet grazing in wet grasslands in Northern Greece. Hacquetia 18 (2): 207–218.

Polchaninova, N., Savchenko, G., Ronkin, V., Drogvalenko, A. & Putchkov, A. 2019: Summer fire in steppe habitats: long-term effects on vegetation and autumnal assemblages of cursorial arthropods. Hacquetia 18 (2): 219–237.