History

The database CLO-PLA (CLOnal PLAnts) has a long history since the original idea conceived by Jitka Klimešová and the late Leoš Klimeš in 1992.

It was first presented at Clonal Workshop in Visegrad, Hungary, 1995. Although it began as the first attempt to show diversity of clonal growth in plants, in response to the surge of research on clonal plants (see e.g. De Kroon & van Groenendael, 1997), it later became part of the trait-based comparative ecology (see e.g. the LEDA database, Kleyer et al. 2008).

Until now, there have been the following versions of the database:

CLO-PLA1 (version 1) was a database of clonal growth in plants of central Europe. Modes of clonal growth were classified into 27 types, reflecting the morphological origin of clonal growth organs (whether stems or roots provide connection between individual ramets and whether stems or roots bear buds that give rise to new ramets), their position in relation to the soil surface and their size. The database included 2686 species.

CLO-PLA2 (version 2) was an extended version of the CLO-PLA1 database. Besides the modes of clonal growth, 25 variables, either directly or indirectly related to clonal growth, were tabulated for individual species (Klimeš and Klimešová 1999).

CLO-PLA3 (version 3.0) was a new, fully referenced database (Klimešová and Klimeš 2006). It covered both modes of clonal growth, as classified earlier, and a number of plant traits, selected mainly as potentially interesting for users interested in functional response of clonal plants to various types of disturbance. It was based both on literature records and field data collected by the authors. This version included 2909 species. It is available also as a part of the current database (source CLO-PLA nonaggregated). Part of this database was included in the LEDA database (Kleyer et al. 2008), which covered, i.a., plant traits on clonal growth taken from the CLO-PLA3. It later became a part of TRY (Kattge et al. 2019). A description of this version (without the data proper) was published by Klimešová and de Bello (2009).

CLO-PLA3 aggregated (version 3.4) was an aggregated (by species) and easy to use version of the version 3.0 with a few additional traits, published as a datapaper in the journal Ecology Klimešová et al. 2017. It is available also as a part of the current database (source CLO-PLA aggregated). A subset of species from this version occurring in the Czech Republic have been included in the comprehensive database of the Czech flora and vegetation (Pladias; Chytrý et al. 2020).

CLO-PLA4 (version 4.0) is the present version of the CLO-PLA database. It has a worldwide scope, fully standardized trait list and species names harmonized with the Wolrd Flora Online.

References

Chytrý M. et al. (2021) Pladias database of the Czech Republic. Preslia 93:1-87. DOI: 10.23855/preslia.2021.001

de Kroon H. & van Groenendael J. (eds.) (1997) The ecology and evolution of clonal plants Backhuys, Leiden.

Kattge, J., Bönisch, G., Diaz, S., Lavorel, S., Prentice, I. C., Leadley, P., … Wirth, C. (2019) TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access. Global Change Biology https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14904

Kleyer M, Bekker RM, Knevel IC, et al. (2008) The LEDA Traitbase: a database of life-history traits of the Northwest European flora. Journal of Ecology 96: 1266–1274.

Klimeš L, Klimešová J. (1999) CLO-PLA2 – a database of clonal plants in central Europe. Plant Ecology 141: 9-19.

Klimešová J. & Klimeš L. (2006) CLO-PLA3: a database of clonal growth architecture of Central-European plants. http://clopla.butbn.cas.cz.

Klimešová, J. & de Bello F. (2009) CLO-PLA: the database of clonal and bud bank traits of Central European flora. Journal of Vegetation Science 20: 511–516.

Klimešová J, Danihelka J, Chrtek J, de Bello F, Herben T. (2017) CLO-PLA: a database of clonal and bud bank traits of Central European flora. Ecology 98: 1179.

Klimešová, J., Martínková, J., Pausas, JG., Gomes de Moraes, M., Herben, T., Yu, FH., Puntieri J., Vesk, PA., de Bello F., Janeček, Š., Altman, J., Appezzato-da-Glória, B., Bartušková, A., Crivellaro, A., Doležal, J., Ott, JP., Paula S., Schnablová R., Schweingruber FH., Ottaviani G. (2019) Handbook of standardized protocols for collecting plant modularity traits. Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics 40: 125485 DOI: 10.1016/j.ppees.2019.125485