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We selected 15 sheep-grazed sand pastures along a gradient of increasing grazing intensity to study the fine-scale patterns of main biomass fractions (green biomass, litter) and that of plant species and functional groups (life forms and social behaviour types). We classified them into five grazing intensity levels based on stocking density, proximity to drinking and resting places and the number of faeces. We aimed to answer the following questions: (i) How does increasing intensity of sheep grazing affect the amount of green biomass, the species richness and their relationship in sand pastures? (ii) How does increasing intensity of sheep grazing affect the biomass of perennial and short-lived graminoids and forbs? (iii) How does the disturbance value-expressed in the biomass ratio of disturbance-tolerant and ruderal species-change along the gradient of grazing intensity? A unimodal relationship between green biomass and species richness was detected; however, the ordination (canonical correspondence analysis, CCA) showed no clustering of pastures subjected to the same levels of grazing intensity. Along the grazing intensity gradient we found an increasing trend in species richness and significant differences in green biomass (decreasing trend), litter (decreasing trend), graminoids (decreasing trend) and short-lived forbs (increasing trend). We found an increasing amount of disturbance-tolerant and ruderal species with increasing grazing intensity. We suggest that we might need to use multiple scales for sampling and a fine-scale assessment of grazing intensity. Our findings might be instructive for pastures in densely populated regions, which are prone to the encroachment of disturbance-tolerant and ruderal species., Competing Interests: None declared., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The existing plant trait databases' applicability is limited for studies dealing with the flora and vegetation of the eastern and central part of Europe and for large-scale comparisons across regions, mostly because their geographical data coverage is limited and they incorporate records from several different sources, often from regions with markedly different climatic conditions. These problems motivated the compilation of a regional dataset for the flora of the Pannonian region (Eastern Central Europe). PADAPT, the Pannonian Dataset of Plant Traits relies on regional data sources and collates data on 54 traits and attributes of the plant species of the Pannonian region. The current version covers approximately 90% of the species of the region and consists of 126,337 records on 2745 taxa. By including species of the eastern part of Europe not covered by other databases, PADAPT can facilitate studying the flora and vegetation of the eastern part of the continent. Although data coverage is far from complete, PADAPT meets the longstanding need for a regional database of the Pannonian flora., (© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.)

One of the most important and most easily measurable physical characteristics of plant seeds is their weight, which influences and indicates crucial ecological processes. Seed weight affects spatial and temporal dispersibility, and can also influence seed predation and the germination, growth and survival of seedlings. Providing trait data for species missing from international databases is key to promote studies that advance our understanding of the functioning of plant communities and ecosystems, which is an essential issue in the face of the global climate change and biodiversity loss. Compared to species from Western and Northwestern Europe, those with an Eastern or Central European centre of distribution are underrepresented in most international trait databases. Therefore, the creation of specific trait databases is key to help regional studies. In this respect, it is important not only to collect fresh seeds for weight measurements, but also to measure and process data of seeds preserved in collections and make them available to the broader scientific community. In this data paper we provide seed weight data to fill in missing trait data of plant species of Central and Eastern Europe. Our dataset includes weight measurement for 281 taxa of the Central European flora including also some cultivated and exotic species. The seeds were collected between 1971 and 2021 mostly in Central Europe. One part of the measured seeds was collected in the last decade, the other part is from an older seed collection, but all seeds were measured recently. For each species, we collected a minimum of 3 × 100 intact seeds, if possible. The seeds were air-dried at room temperature (approximately 21 °C and 50% relative humidity) for at least two weeks and measured with an accuracy of 0.001 g using an analytical balance. The thousand-seed weights reported here were calculated based on the measured values. Our goal for the future is to incorporate the seed weight data reported here in a regional database (Pannonian Database of Plant Traits - PADAPT) that gathers plant traits and other plant characteristics for the Pannonian flora. The data presented here will facilitate trait-based analyses of the flora and vegetation of Central Europe., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Author(s).)

Trait-based ecology is gaining ground nowadays on species-based ecology: the number of research and publication focusing on the ecological role of taxa instead of the species themselves increased significantly in the last two decades. One great advantage of this approach is that communities with different species composition due to great geographical distances (e.g., different continents) or different environmental conditions (e.g., loess, sand, and alkaline grasslands) become comparable. Obtaining trait values is, however, labour and time consuming even in the case of so-called soft traits. It is therefore reasonable and desirable for scientists to share their data as widely as possible. Demand for such data induced the publication of data papers and the establishment of databases, which support both theoretical ecological research and practical restoration ecological projects. Although several international databases (e.g., TRY, LEDA, CLO-PLA, BiolFLOR) are available nowadays, Central and Eastern European species are either missing or underrepresented in them. Consequently, measurement and publication of the traits of species typical in the above region is necessary. This paper presents leaf trait (leaf fresh and dry weight, leaf area, specific leaf area and leaf dry matter content) data for more than 1100 species of the Central European flora., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2022 The Author(s).)