Evaluation of European mistletoe (Viscum album L.) infection in the Castle Park in Lednice

Abstract

This experiment focused on the evaluation of mistletoe infection (Viscum album L.) in main sections of the castle park in Lednice. The study evaluates the proportion of affected and unaffected individuals of host taxa and the intensity of their infestation. For Acer campestre and Tilia cordata one-way ANOVA was used to detect the difference among the number of mistletoe bushes and tree age, development stage, vitality and location. For the modelling of mistletoe infection probability also the dependence on these and other continuous explanatory variables (height and crown volume) was used for logistic regression with binomial distribution. Our results show that number of mistletoe on trees within same taxa increases with the tree age and with the lower tree vitality, but there is large difference between the hosts. Due to the results of logistic regression, the same factors also have strong impact on the probability of mistletoe infection, e.g. tree age and tree vitality. In this case no large differences were found between the hosts.

Keywords

• <i>Viscum album</i>
• host woody species
• mistletoe infection
• probability of infection
• incidence of mistletoe
• logistic regression