TY - JOUR

T1 - More losses than gains during one century of plant biodiversity change in Germany

AU - Jandt, Ute

AU - Bruelheide, Helge

AU - Jansen, Florian

AU - Bonn, Aletta

AU - Grescho, Volker

AU - Klenke, Reinhard A.

AU - Sabatini, Francesco Maria

AU - Bernhardt-Römermann, Markus

AU - Blüml, Volker

AU - Dengler, Jürgen

AU - Diekmann, Martin

AU - Doerfler, Inken

AU - Döring, Ute

AU - Dullinger, Stefan

AU - Haider, Sylvia

AU - Heinken, Thilo

AU - Horchler, Peter

AU - Kuhn, Gisbert

AU - Lindner, Martin

AU - Metze, Katrin

AU - Müller, Norbert

AU - Naaf, Tobias

AU - Peppler-Lisbach, Cord

AU - Poschlod, Peter

AU - Roscher, Christiane

AU - Rosenthal, Gert

AU - Rumpf, Sabine B.

AU - Schmidt, Wolfgang

AU - Schrautzer, Joachim

AU - Schwabe, Angelika

AU - Schwartze, Peter

AU - Sperle, Thomas

AU - Stanik, Nils

AU - Storm, Christian

AU - Voigt, Winfried

AU - Wegener, Uwe

AU - Wesche, Karsten

AU - Wittig, Burghard

AU - Wulf, Monika

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

PY - 2022/11/17

Y1 - 2022/11/17

N2 - Long-term analyses of biodiversity data highlight a ‘biodiversity conservation paradox’: biological communities show substantial species turnover over the past century1,2, but changes in species richness are marginal1,3–5. Most studies, however, have focused only on the incidence of species, and have not considered changes in local abundance. Here we asked whether analysing changes in the cover of plant species could reveal previously unrecognized patterns of biodiversity change and provide insights into the underlying mechanisms. We compiled and analysed a dataset of 7,738 permanent and semi-permanent vegetation plots from Germany that were surveyed between 2 and 54 times from 1927 to 2020, in total comprising 1,794 species of vascular plants. We found that decrements in cover, averaged across all species and plots, occurred more often than increments; that the number of species that decreased in cover was higher than the number of species that increased; and that decrements were more equally distributed among losers than were gains among winners. Null model simulations confirmed that these trends do not emerge by chance, but are the consequence of species-specific negative effects of environmental changes. In the long run, these trends might result in substantial losses of species at both local and regional scales. Summarizing the changes by decade shows that the inequality in the mean change in species cover of losers and winners diverged as early as the 1960s. We conclude that changes in species cover in communities represent an important but understudied dimension of biodiversity change that should more routinely be considered in time-series analyses.

AB - Long-term analyses of biodiversity data highlight a ‘biodiversity conservation paradox’: biological communities show substantial species turnover over the past century1,2, but changes in species richness are marginal1,3–5. Most studies, however, have focused only on the incidence of species, and have not considered changes in local abundance. Here we asked whether analysing changes in the cover of plant species could reveal previously unrecognized patterns of biodiversity change and provide insights into the underlying mechanisms. We compiled and analysed a dataset of 7,738 permanent and semi-permanent vegetation plots from Germany that were surveyed between 2 and 54 times from 1927 to 2020, in total comprising 1,794 species of vascular plants. We found that decrements in cover, averaged across all species and plots, occurred more often than increments; that the number of species that decreased in cover was higher than the number of species that increased; and that decrements were more equally distributed among losers than were gains among winners. Null model simulations confirmed that these trends do not emerge by chance, but are the consequence of species-specific negative effects of environmental changes. In the long run, these trends might result in substantial losses of species at both local and regional scales. Summarizing the changes by decade shows that the inequality in the mean change in species cover of losers and winners diverged as early as the 1960s. We conclude that changes in species cover in communities represent an important but understudied dimension of biodiversity change that should more routinely be considered in time-series analyses.

KW - Biology

KW - Biodiversity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85140115601&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/b4c9ae97-1279-34fa-abc1-10861c9d6048/

U2 - 10.1038/s41586-022-05320-w

DO - 10.1038/s41586-022-05320-w

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 36261519

AN - SCOPUS:85140115601

VL - 611

SP - 512

EP - 518

JO - Nature

JF - Nature

SN - 0028-0836

IS - 7936

ER -