Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats
Idoia Biurrun, Remigiusz Pielech, Iwona Dembicz, François Gillet, Łukasz Kozub, Corrado Marcenò, Triin Reitalu, Koenraad Van Meerbeek, Riccardo Guarino, Milan Chytrý, Robin J. Pakeman, Zdenka Preislerová, Irena Axmanová, Sabina Burrascano, Sándor Bartha, Steffen Boch, Hans Henrik Bruun, Timo Conradi, Pieter De Frenne, Franz Essl, Goffredo Filibeck, Michal Hájek, Borja Jiménez‐Alfaro, Анна Куземко, Zsolt Molnár, Meelis Pärtel, Ricarda Pätsch, Honor C. Prentice, Jan Roleček, Laura Sutcliffe, Massimo Terzi, Manuela Winkler, Jianshuang Wu, Svetlana Aćić, Alicia Teresa Rosario Acosta, Elías Afif Khouri, Munemitsu Akasaka, Juha M. Alatalo, Michele Aleffi, Alla Aleksanyan, Arshad Ali, Iva Apostolova, Parvaneh Ashouri, Zoltán Bátori, Esther Baumann, Thomas Becker, Elena Belonovskaya, José Luis Benito Alonso, Asun Berastegi, Ariel Bergamini, Kuber P. Bhatta, Ilaria Bonini, Marc-Olivier Büchler, Vasyl Budzhak, Álvaro Bueno, Fabrizio Buldrini, Juan Antonio Campos, Laura Cancellieri, Marta Carboni, Tobias Ceulemans, Alessandro Chiarucci, Cristina Chocarro, Luisa Conti, Anna Mária Csergő, Beata Cykowska‐Marzencka, Marta Czarniecka‐Wiera, Marta Czarnocka‐Cieciura, Patryk Czortek, Jiří Danihelka, Francesco de Bello, Balázs Déak, László Demeter, Lei Deng, Martin Diekmann, Jiří Doležal, Christian Dolnik, Pavel Dřevojan, Cecilia Duprè, Klaus Ecker, Hamid Ejtehadi, Brigitta Erschbamer, Javier Etayo, Jonathan Etzold, Tünde Farkas, Mohammad Farzam, George Fayvush, María Rosa Fernández Calzado, Manfred Finckh, Wendy Fjellstad, Georgios Fotiadis, Daniel García‐Magro, Itziar García‐Mijangos, Rosario G. Gavilán, Markus S. Germany, Sahar Ghafari, Gianpietro Giusso del Galdo, John‐Arvid Grytnes, Behlül Güler, Alba Gutiérrez‐Girón, Aveliina Helm
Abstract
Abstract 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 m 2 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/databases/GrasslandDiversityExplorer ) 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.