Trade-off between light availability and soil fertility determine refugial conditions for the relict light-demanding species in lowland forests

Classification of European oak–hornbeam forests and related vegetation types

“…However, this issue remains controversial (Klötzli, 1968;Frey, 1995;Leuschner, 1997;Bohn et al, 2000Bohn et al, -2003Leuschner & Ellenberg, 2017). OHFs are of key importance for biodiversity conservation because they serve as refugia for nemoral biota, especially in largely deforested low- Willner et al, 2020;Gholizadeh et al, 2020) as well as rare semishade species (Garbarino & Bergmeier, 2014;Miklín & Čížek, 2016;Kiedrzyński et al, 2017). They are classified as near threatened (NT) for EU28 and EU28+ countries, as their abiotic and biotic quality has decreased significantly over the last 50 years (Janssen et al, 2016).…”

“…OHFs are of key importance for biodiversity conservation because they serve as refugia for nemoral biota, especially in largely deforested lowlands (Vera, 2000; Kolb & Diekmann, 2004; Stefańska‐Krzaczek et al, 2016; Chytrý et al, 2019). They harbour numerous narrow‐range (limited to <20% of the study region, typically <10%) and relict forest plant species (Coldea, 2015; Novák et al, 2019, Novák, Willner et al, 2020; Gholizadeh et al, 2020) as well as rare semi‐shade species (Garbarino & Bergmeier, 2014; Miklín & Čížek, 2016; Kiedrzyński et al, 2017). They are classified as near threatened (NT) for EU28 and EU28+ countries, as their abiotic and biotic quality has decreased significantly over the last 50 years (Janssen et al, 2016).…”