SUBJECT
Plant Trait Databases
practical
Master
2
Semesters 1-4
Autumn/Spring semester
The practical is held in six blocks, each lasting 4-5 hours.
1. Fundamentals of plant taxonomy and ecology. What are plant traits. Hungarian and international plat traits databases, and their availability. Benefits of using plant traits in plant ecology, and in interdisciplinary researches. Frequent mistakes in the work with databases.
2. Demonstration of homework based on the themes of the previous block. Fundamentals of the taxonomic nomenclature. Recognition and handling of nomeclatural problems in the evaluation of floristical or phytosociological datasets. Work with archive data.
3. Demonstration of homework based on the themes of the previous block. The structure of Hungarian Flora Database. The phytogeografical and phytosociological attributes in the Flora Database. Analysis of that attributes, their categories, acceptability in publications. Handling the problems of the data structure. Completion of the database with missing data. Scaling problems, regional database versus the local behaviour of species.
4. Demonstration of homework based on the themes of the previous block. Ecological plant traits. Life form, ecological indicator (TWR) values. and their development, validity, and acceptability in publications. Delimitation of their use, acceptable and non-acceptable operations in data evaluation. The possibilities of the hierarchical attributes.
5. Demonstration of homework based on the themes of the previous block. The attributes of conservation biology. Simon's nature conservation values, Borhidi's social behaviour types, and Németh's complex system. Inland and international lists of protected and threatened plants. Acceptability of this attributes in ecological research. The geographical limits of validity of that systems. Acceptable and non-acceptable operations in data evaluation. Possibility to create local systems to estimate the nature conservation values.
6. Demonstration of homework based on the themes of the previous block. Evaluation of floristical and phytosociological data based on the demonstrated methods. Recognition the effect of the subjective sapling method of the classical plant sociology. Selection of the themes of the written presentations.
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Bill Shipley: From Plant Traits to Vegetation Structure, Cambridge University Press, 2010