We focus on the role of human impacts on aquatic ecosystems and combine various approaches to study individual behaviour, life histories, population dynamics and community assembly. We strive to gain mechanistic understanding of individual-level processes that give rise to population- and community-level phenomena.

Our main expertise is on aquatic invertebrates in small standing waters; collaborations also involve other freshwater taxa from algae to fish. We link fieldwork with laboratory and outdoor experiments, advanced statistical analyses and mathematical models.

Our current emphasis is on the consequences of expected climate change, such as rising temperatures and changes in habitat eutrophication and structure, on trophic interactions and on consequences of phenotypic plasticity for life histories, trophic interactions and community structure. We also explore the impacts of combined stressors including climate change and various pollutants on communities ion standing waters. 

Our lab is based across two institutions: Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, and Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Photo: Lab members and interns in 2018 (the bygone pre-covid era...)