Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats

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2021-06-22Author
Biurrun, Idoia
Pielech, Remigiusz
Dembicz, Iwona
Gillet, François
Kozub, Ukasz
Marcenò, Corrado
Reitalu, Triin
Van Meerbeek, Koenraad
Guarino, Riccardo
Chytrý, Milan
Pakeman, Robin J
Preislerová, Zdenka
Axmanová, Irena
Burrascano, Sabina
Bartha, Sándor
Boch, Steffen
Bruun, Hans Henrik
Conradi, Timo
De Frenne, Pieter
Essl, Franz
Filibeck, Goffredo
Hájek, Michal
Jiménez‐Alfaro, Borja
Kuzemko, Anna
Molnár, Zsolt
Pärtel, Meelis
Pätsch, Ricarda
Prentice, Honor C
Roleček, Jan
Sutcliffe, Laura M.E.
Terzi, Massimo
Winkler, Manuela
Wu, Jianshuang
Aćić, Svetlana
Acosta, Alicia T.R.
Afif, Elias
Suggested citation
Biurrun, Idoia;
Pielech, Remigiusz;
Dembicz, Iwona;
Gillet, François;
Kozub, Ukasz;
Marcenò, Corrado;
...
Chocarro, Cristina.
(2021)
.
Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats.
Journal of Vegetation Science, 2021, vol. 32, num. e13050.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jvs.13050.
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Aims: Understanding fine-grain diversity patterns across large spatial extents is fundamental for macroecological research and biodiversity conservation. Using the GrassPlot database, we provide benchmarks of fine-grain richness values of Palaearctic open habitats for vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens and complete vegetation (i.e., the sum of the former three groups). Location: Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods: We used 126,524 plots of eight standard grain sizes from the GrassPlot database: 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10, 100 and 1,000 m2 and calculated the mean richness and standard deviations, as well as maximum, minimum, median, and first and third quartiles for each combination of grain size, taxonomic group, biome, region, vegetation type and phytosociological class. Results: Patterns of plant diversity in vegetation types and biomes differ across grain sizes and taxonomic groups. Overall, secondary (mostly semi-natural) grasslands and natural grasslands are the richest vegetation type. The open-access file "GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks" and the web tool "GrassPlot Diversity Explorer" are now available online (https://edgg.org/datab ases/Grass landD ivers ityEx plorer) and provide more insights into species richness patterns in the Palaearctic open habitats. Conclusions: The GrassPlot Diversity Benchmarks provide high-quality data on species richness in open habitat types across the Palaearctic. These benchmark data can be used in vegetation ecology, macroecology, biodiversity conservation and data quality checking. While the amount of data in the underlying GrassPlot database and their spatial coverage are smaller than in other extensive vegetation-plot databases, species recordings in GrassPlot are on average more complete, making it a valuable complementary data source in macroecology.