The Pladias (Plant Diversity Analysis and Synthesis) Database of the Czech Flora and Vegetation was developed by the Pladias project team in 2014-2018 and has been continuously updated since then. The flora section of the database contains critically revised information on the Czech vascular flora, including 13.6 million plant occurrence records, which are dynamically displayed in maps, and data on 120 plant characteristics (traits, environmental associations and other information), divided into the sections: (1) Habitus and growth type, (2) Leaf, (3) Flower, (4) Fruit, seed and dispersal, (5) Belowground organs and clonality, (6) Trophic mode, (7) Karyology, (8) Taxon origin, (9) Ecological indicator values, (10) Habitat and sociology, (11) Distribution and frequency, and (12) Threats and protection. The vegetation section of the database contains information on Czech vegetation types extracted from the monograph Vegetation of the Czech Republic. The data are supplemented by national botanical bibliographies, electronic versions of the standard national flora and vegetation monographs, a database of more than 19,000 pictures of plant taxa and vegetation types, and digital maps (shapefiles) with botanical information. The data from the database are available online on a public portal www.pladias.cz, which also provides download options for various datasets and online identification keys to the species and vegetation types of the Czech Republic. In this paper, we describe the general scope, structure and content of the database, and details of the data on plant characteristics. To illustrate the data and describe the main geographic patterns in selected plant characteristics, we provide maps of mean values of numerical characteristics or proportions of categories for categorical characteristics on the map of the country in a grid of 5 longitudinal × 3 latitudinal minutes (approximately 6.0 km × 5.5 km). We also summarize the main variation patterns in the functional traits in the Czech flora using the principal component analysis.

Questions: What are the factors limiting the establishment of hemiparasitic Rhinanthus spp., ecosystem engineers promoting diversity and stability of communities, in restoration of species-rich meadows? How can these constraints be overcome?Location: Czech Republic, Central Europe.Methods: Sowing of Rhinanthus seeds in grasslands of different history, biotic and abiotic properties accompanied by a variety of management practices. Followed by consequent monitoring of establishment and population dynamics and synthesis of relevant literature resources.Conclusion: Mowing or grazing, litter removal, proper timing of sowing, and use of the seeds from local seed sources should considerably increase probability of Rhinanthus successful introduction. However, stochastic events like adverse weather conditions or damage through herbivory make the prediction of introduction success difficult.

Functional and phylogenetic diversity (FD and PD respectively) of the resident community are expected to exert a key role in community resistance to colonization by surrounding species, and their establishment success. However, few studies have explored this topic experimentally or evaluated the interactive effects of these diversity measures. We implemented a diversity experiment to disentangle the role of FD and PD by sowing mixtures of 6 species, drawn from a pool of 19 species naturally coexisting in central European mesic meadows. The mixtures were designed to cover four independent combinations of high and low FD and PD. Species covers were estimated in spring and late summer over two growing seasons. We then assessed the establishment success of colonizers as a function of their mean traits and phylogenetic distance to the resident (i.e. sown) communities, as well as the resistance of the resident communities to natural colonizers as a function of their functional and phylogenetic structure. Results generally indicated a temporal shift regarding which trait values made a colonizer successful, from an acquisitive strategy in early stages to a more conservative trait syndrome in later stages. FD decreased community resistance to natural colonization. However, PD tempered this effect: with high PD, FD was not significant, suggesting complementary information between these two components of biodiversity. On average, colonizing species were more functionally distant from the resident species in sown communities with high functional diversity, i.e. those that were more colonized. Synthesis. Our results confirm an interplay between FD and PD during community assembly processes, namely resistance to colonizers, suggesting that these two descriptors of biodiversity only partially overlap in their contribution to the overall ecological structure of a community. The hypothesis that higher FD increases resistance through a more complete use of resources was challenged. Results rather suggested that greater FD could provide an unsaturated functional trait space allowing functionally unique species to occupy it.

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1. Revealing the role of biodiversity in ecosystem functioning (BEF) has been a major focus of ecological research over recent decades. In general, results from artificially assembled communities point to the important role of biodiversity showing that loss of species has a negative effect on various ecosystem func-