DIFFERENT HABITAT AND TAXA: VARIOUS APPROACHES AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR A LONG-SIGHTED MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION

The thesis starts in the continental context of the White Carpathians Protected Landscape Area and UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (Czech Republic), a protected area famous for its grasslands with the globally highest fine-scale plant species richness. The effects of management on species richness and composition of both plants and animals were tested in relation to different management practices (mowing, grazing, abandonment and mixed management) for several years at several sites, clarifying the disagreements that have occurred among conservationists and practitioners to date. The thesis continues with a focus on the Mediterranean context. Here, the distribution patterns of understorey assemblages of coastal pine stands on sand dunes were studied, given the scarcity of literature due to scholarly disdain. Using more than a hundred plots along Italian coastlines in different pine forest types, community similarity and specificity was assessed in order to provide lacking management clues. Subsequently, focusing on a pine forest stand located in Southern Tuscany, the thesis aimed to solve another pivotal question, namely by investigating the concordance of species assemblages between vascular plants, oribatid mites and soil chemical properties with special attention to the role of vegetation structure (i.e. tree, shrub and herbaceous cover) for biological components. This part provides new answers about congruence among communities and following appropriate management practices to be fulfilled for communities. The last part, performed along a wide range of Tuscan coasts, deals with one of the most extreme habitats in the Mediterranean basin: coastal dunes. Here, the understanding of the response of plant species to soil factors was estimated. This provides concrete proposals for the effective conservation of coastal habitats.