Freshwater ecology (HydroBio)

The HydroBio team focuses on a broad range of topics and challenges in the ecology of running and standing waters – from taxonomy and population dynamics of individual species, through community structure and diversity, to historical environmental reconstructions and the assessment of anthropogenic impacts on aquatic ecosystems. Currently, the team’s research is primarily oriented towards standing waters, with particular emphasis on functional ecology, metacommunity dynamics, and paleoecological reconstructions. Within the study of ecosystem functioning in ponds, the team addresses questions related to the degree of functional redundancy in communities, the interchangeability of functional and taxonomic diversity, and the role of detritivores in organic matter decomposition. In the metacommunity research, the team investigates which models of community organization prevail, the relative importance of local environmental conditions and dispersal for community structure, and whether models of community organization in small standing waters are geographically transferable. The paleoecological component of the research focuses on assessing the effects of anthropogenic stressors (eutrophication, acidification) and postglacial climate change on the succession of lake communities. The outcomes of the team’s research extend beyond basic science, with direct applications in biomonitoring and in the assessment of environmental impacts of planned human activities on aquatic ecosystems. 

The team is composed of relatively young researchers (average age < 50 years), yet it is very active in publishing: M. Svitok (WoS: H-index = 22, 135 publications, 2778 citations without self-citations), M. Novikmec (9, 32, 379), V. Kubovčík (8, 13, 139). In total, the team has an H-index of 22, with 149 publications in WoS and 2964 citations (excluding self-citations). Team members have participated in several international projects (AL:PE, MOLAR, EMERGE, Interreg HU–SK) and are regularly involved in projects funded by national grant agencies (APVV, VEGA, KEGA). The hydrobiological team has been systematically building its own scientific school (10 completed PhD students and 5 currently in training) and actively contributes to the scientific community (organization of conferences, reviewing for international journals – Global Change Biology, Biological Reviews, Journal of Environmental Management, Ecological Indicators, Diversity & Distributions, Aquatic Sciences, Hydrobiologia, Aquatic Ecology, Insect Conservation and Diversity, Fundamental and Applied Limnology, among others). Given the relatively young age of its members, the team has strong potential for further long-term scientific growth.