Forest soil and litter is inhabited by a diverse community of animals, which directly and indirectly rely on dead organic matter as habitat and food resource. However, community composition may be driven by biotic or abiotic forces, and these vary with changes in habitat structure and resource supply associated with forest land use. To evaluate these changes, we compiled comprehensive data on the species composition of soil an...

Central Europe is generally not considered a drought‐prone region compared with, for example, the Mediterranean. However, Central Europe, including the Czech Republic, recently experienced a series of drought events with substantial impacts, especially on crop production. Because agriculture systems, and vegetation in general, have adapted to evenly distributed precipitation, the region is susceptible to even short‐term drough...

Predator body size and prey quality are important factors driving prey choice and consumption rates. Both factors might affect prey detection success in PCR ‐based gut content analysis, potentially resulting in over‐ or underestimation of feeding rates. Experimental evidence, however, is scarce. We examined how body size and prey quality affect prey DNA detection success in centipede predators. Due to metabolic rates increasin...

Ecological communities consist of small abundant and large non‐abundant species. The energetic equivalence rule is an often‐observed pattern that could be explained by equal energy usage among abundant small organisms and non‐abundant large organisms. To generate this pattern, metabolism (as an indicator of individual energy use) and abundance have to scale inversely with body mass, and cancel each other out. In contrast, the...