Projects

The newly established Sowa Research Infrastructure brought together experts from various fields. Its main goal was to support excellent research on aquatic and soil ecosystems. As member of the team at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, I was involved in developing experimental and modelling approaches to assess the effects of anthropogenic impacts on communities in freshwaters, using invertabrates in small standing waters as a model system. The project supported a significant upgrade of our lab facilities and construction of a brand new mesocosm array between 2017 and 2020.

Funding: Czech state budget / Ministry of Education

In collaboration with Lumir Gvozdik at the Institute of Vertebrate Biology (Czech Academy of Sciences), we examined the role of individual thermal performance curves and thermally induced plasticity in life histories and species interactions of freshwater ectotherms under the anticipated climate change. The project focused on aquatic insects and newts as model groups and combined laboratory experiments with numerical simulations.

Funding: Grant Agency of the Czech Republic