Institute of Forest Ecology
Topic
Biogeography and ecology of Orthoptera in Carpathians
PhD. program
Ecology and Conservation of Biodiversity
Year of admission
2024
Name of the supervisor
Ing. Benjamín Jarčuška, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Faculty of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Technical University in Zvolen
Annotation
Orthopterans are most commonly associated with different semi-natural and natural grasslands in temperate zone. There, the grasslands, surrounded by arable fields and forests, are spatially isolated/fragmented thus can be viewed as island-like systems (terrestrial habitat islands) and can be used as model to study the biogeographic forces shaping biodiversity. The PhD project will examine orthopterans of grasslands by using island biogeography theory, which may improve our understanding of the effect of insularity on habitat island biota. The thesis will study orthopteran diversity and its scale components (alpha, beta, zeta and gamma diversities) and aspects (taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity) in relation to ecological and evolutionary drivers while taking into account operating scale of potential drivers. Assessing quantitative information on habitat and other ecological requirements and preferences of orthopterans could enable us to use orthopterans as bioindicator species for grassland ecosystems. Understanding distribution patterns of orthopterans diversity in regions according to a scale-dependent manner will have conservation implications. Functional and phylogenetic approach could improve explanation of differences in distributional pattern of species of European and national importance in comparison to ubiquitous species.