Species diversity of segetal communities in tuber crops and in winter and spring cereals

Abstract

The work presents the results of studies on the diversity of weed communities in tuber crops as well as in winter and spring cereals under similar climatic and soil conditions. We examined overall species abundance in the groups analysed, the average species number per relevé, as well as weed cover of the study area. Additionally, species composition, number of individual species and their biomass were determined. Dominant species in each crop group were distinguished. Species diversity was determined based on the following ecological indices: the Shannon-Wiener index of biodiversity H’ and Simpson’s index of dominance C. The indices were computed on the biomass and number-of-species basis. The objective of the work was to compare the structure and diversity of weed communities in the crops studied. The communities analysed differed in all the characteristics examined. Differences were found between biodiversity and dominance indices calculated for individual crop groups, but their significance depended on the method applied to calculate the indices.

Keywords

• weeds
• number of species
• fresh matter
• dry matter
• different crop groups
• ecological indices