Project title: Maladaptive behavior and species turnover as a key to understanding the vulnerability of freshwater communities to rapid environmental changes
Registration number: 25-16274S
Provider: Czech Science Foundation
Programme: Standard
Project coordinator: Czech University of Life Sciences Prague
Project partners: University of Ostrava, Faculty of Science
CZU Principal investigator: Mgr. Filip Harabiš, Ph.D.
Project manager: Eliška Kyšperská
Project schedule: 01/2025–12/2027
Total project budget: CZK 9,892,000
FES project budget: CZK 5,894,000
Abstract:
Perception of the environmental quality during colonization precedes the action of the selection mechanisms such as predation or environmental filtering and undoubtedly affects the structure of freshwater communities. Many aquatic and semiaquatic organisms are during their life cycles repeatedly exposed to challenges to assess their habitat quality; terrestrial for themselves and aquatic for their larvae. However, evolutionarily effective cognitive mechanisms used during colonization often fail due to human-mediated changes in the structure and quality of the environment. As the diversity of freshwater communities is facing a huge decline, understanding the habitat selection mechanisms that lead to the preference for poor-quality patches is not only the key to understanding the nature of this phenomenon but also offers the opportunity to create habitats of true quality.