Milan Chytrý - Biography#

Milan Chytrý is a Professor of Botany at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, President of the Czech Botanical Society and Secretary of the Working Group European Vegetation Survey.

He received an MSc. Degree in Systematic Biology and Ecology (1990) and Ph.D. in Botany (1995) at Masaryk University. Since 1993, he has been employed successively as a Research Assistant, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Full Professor at the Department of Botany and Department of Botany and Zoology at the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University. He was the Head of the Department of Botany (2000-2005) and the Director of the Department of Botany and Zoology (2017-2024). He was a visiting scientist at several institutions abroad, most notably the University of Vienna (Austria) and Lancaster University (UK).

He studies the diversity and ecology of vegetation and natural habitats. He focuses on vegetation and habitat classification, macroecology of vegetation, vegetation change, vegetation history, biological invasions and nature conservation. He worked in different parts of Europe, Siberia, Taiwan and other areas. He was a PI of 16 research projects and worked as an expert for the European Environment Agency.

He has been active at the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS), where he acts as the Secretary of the Working Group European Vegetation Survey (EVS, since 2012) and Council member (since 2007). He founded the databases European Vegetation Archive (2014) and FloraVeg.EU (2022), the main data sources on the diversity of European vegetation and terrestrial habitats. He acted as the Chief Editor of the flagship IAVS journals, the Journal of Vegetation Science and Applied Vegetation Science (2010-2025). He was the main organizer of EVS and IAVS conferences in Brno in 2008 and 2015.

He has been a leader in Czech botanical research. He was a Vice-President of the Czech Botanical Society (2010-2024) and was elected President in 2024. He edited the “Habitat Catalogue of the Czech Republic” (2001, 2010), the four-volume monograph “Vegetation of the Czech Republic” (2007-2013) and the book “Flora and Vegetation of the Czech Republic” (2017). He led the project of the national botanical online database Pladias.CZ (launched in 2018).

He teaches ecological and botanical courses including field courses at Masaryk University. He gave courses on vegetation data analysis at several universities and research institutions in Europe, the USA and South Africa. He supervised 20 successfully defended PhD students, 50 MSc students and 24 BSc students and mentored several international postdocs.

He has been elected a Member of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic, an Honorary or Distinguished Member of the Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian botanical societies, and an Honorary Member of the International Association for Vegetation Science.

In May 2025, his publication record included:

• Total: 493 publications, including 8 monographs as editor or author and articles in Nature, Nature Plants, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Nature Communications, PNAS and Trends in Plant Science.
• Web of Science Core Collection: 353 publications, cited 19,531 times, H-index = 70
  
• Scopus: 362 publications, cited 21,426 times, H-index 74
  
• Google Scholar: cited 35,861, H-index 94
  

Full publication list