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Amphibians are among the most endangered group of vertebrates. To conserve their diversity we need to comprehend how functional diversity and species traits vary across environmental gradients. We investigate the distribution of functional diversity (functional richness–functional dispersion–functional evenness) and the environmental drivers (climate, energy availability, landscape and anthropogenic attributes) of these patterns for the 68 amphibian species of Europe using generalized least squares models and hierarchical partitioning. Based on eight functional traits, species were arranged in a multidimensional functional trait space and principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) was applied to investigate the occupancy of this space by amphibians. Functional richness mirrored species richness pattern and decreased towards higher latitudes; while, functional dispersion showed an even stronger negative correlation with latitude. Functional evenness did not display a clear latitudinal trend. Areas with higher functional richness and functional dispersion are associated with lower temperature seasonality and increased land cover diversity, in contrast areas with higher functional evenness are characterized by lower mean annual temperature. Climate seasonality mostly influenced the traits related to the first two PCoA axes (i.e., foraging location, mobility mode) which could have been considered as functional response traits and could be used as indicators to examine how communities respond to environmental change. Our work describes the macroecological patterns and discusses the relative importance of alternative underlying mechanisms driving functional diversity of this high‐risk taxonomical group and highlight that species richness presents only part of the biodiversity patterns, while other facets like functional evenness behave distinctively differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trait‐based approaches and functional diversity have been previously used to enlighten our knowledge on the structure of community assemblages which are driven by species interactions or abiotic factors. We assess what amphibian functional diversity implies for the community assembly of amphibians of Europe and whether the use of different Functional Trait Groups (FTGs) affects the results. We used presence/absence atlas with 50 km × 50 km grain size and three functional diversity indices (FRic, RaoQ and FDiv) which reflect functional richness and divergence to estimate functional diversity patterns calculated for three FTGs: Morphological, Habitat‐related, Reproductive and the complete set of traits. To identify the two key processes (environmental filtering and limiting similarity) that may shape amphibian communities and how the relative importance of these processes could change using different FTGs, we used null models to test for non‐random patterns of functional diversity accounting or not for the difference in regional species pool. We show that for the same grid cell, for one FTG we might observe lower than randomly expected functional diversity (i.e., trait convergence or environmental filtering as the dominant community assembly process) while for another FTG or for the complete set of traits, higher than randomly expected functional diversity (i.e., trait divergence or limiting similarity as the dominant community assembly process). This highlights the role of trait selection on the inference drawn regarding community assembly. Furthermore, the number of traits (complete set vs. FTGs) used to quantify functional diversity also affects the conclusions regarding community assembly. We assess what amphibian functional diversity implies for the community assembly of amphibians of Europe and whether the use of different Functional Trait Groups (FTGs) affect the results. We show that for the same grid cell, for one FTG we might observe lower than randomly expected functional diversity (i.e. trait convergence or environmental filtering as the dominant community assembly process) while for another FTG or for the complete set of traits, higher than randomly expected functional diversity (i.e. trait divergence or limiting similarity as dominant community assembly process). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delineation of Quiet Areas (QAs) forms nowadays a national obligation of EU countries. Nevertheless the variable applications of QAs among Member-States have highlighted the need for an international common approach for the preservation of Quietness. The objective of this paper is to identify and thus protect QAs of EU. Our methodological design consisted of the implementation of a coarse scale distance-based methodology regarding the identification of QAs among different countries, environmental and altitudinal zones with a view to investigating the spatial pattern of QAs as well as their spatial relation to other protected areas. QAs cover 56.09% of EU territory with most of the sites comprising an area larger than 100 km 2 indicating that Quietness provides a valuable ecosystem service for human well-being. Central Europe demonstrates lower percentages of Quietness whereas Mediterranean and Scandinavian areas contain higher percentages of Quietness. Also our findings regarding the spatial overlap of QAs with Natura 2000 network suggest that QAs actually indicate sites of environmental quality, and could thus be incorporated into environmental policy initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental policy integration is an acknowledged principle of sustainable development. Spatial planning may be a useful means of integrating two policies with differing objectives. The Birds and Habitats Directives of the European Union (EU) aim at preserving biodiversity through the conservation of the Natura 2000 protected areas network, while the EU's Environmental Noise Directive aims at improving human health and wellbeing by controlling environmental noise, through the preservation of Quiet Areas (QAs). Using Greece as an example, an integrated network of Natura 2000 sites and QAs permitted the identification of potential spatial overlaps. The established Natura 2000 network incorporates more than 30% of the QAs located in the open countryside of Greece, and the combined network includes 17 out of the 19 conservation priority habitat types. Flagship species (like bear, wolf and wild goat) show a preference for sites containing QAs. It may be possible to combine these two EU policies efficiently, as protected and quiet areas appear to be mutually beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The species–area relationship (SAR) is one of the few generalizations in ecology. However, many different relationships are denoted as SARs. Here, we empirically evaluated the differences between SARs derived from nested-contiguous and non-contiguous sampling designs, using plants, birds and butterflies datasets from Great Britain, Greece, Massachusetts, New York and San Diego. The shape of SAR depends on the sampling scheme, but there is little empirical documentation on the magnitude of the deviation between different types of SARs and the factors affecting it. We implemented a strictly nested sampling design to construct nested-contiguous SAR (SA C R), and systematic nested but non-contiguous, and random designs to construct non-contiguous species richness curves (SA S Rs for systematic and SACs for random designs) per dataset. The SA C R lay below any SA S R and most of the SACs. The deviation between them was related to the exponent f of the power law relationship between sampled area and extent. The lower the exponent f , the higher was the deviation between the curves. We linked SA C R to SA S R and SAC through the concept of “effective” area ( A e ), i.e. the nested-contiguous area containing equal number of species with the accumulated sampled area ( A S ) of a non-contiguous sampling. The relationship between effective and sampled area was modeled as log( A e ) = k log( A S ). A Generalized Linear Model was used to estimate the values of k from sampling design and dataset properties. The parameter k increased with the average distance between samples and with beta diversity, while k decreased with f . For both systematic and random sampling, the model performed well in predicting effective area in both the training set and in the test set which was totally independent from the training one. Through effective area, we can link different types of species richness curves based on sampling design properties, sampling effort, spatial scale and beta diversity patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Greece has two island archipelagos, the Aegean and the Ionian, which host a rich array of plants and wildlife, particularly endemic and threatened plant species. Despite the long history of island biogeographic studies in the Aegean, similar studies in the Ionian remain limited, with the two island archipelagos rarely being compared. Results: The Aegean and Ionian archipelagos share many features, especially regarding total plant diversity, but exhibit different patterns of endemism. For instance, when considering similarly sized islands, those in the Ionian host as many as, if not more, species compared to the Aegean. In contrast, the Ionian Islands are poor in endemics (particularly narrow range endemics, such as single island or regional endemics) and threatened taxa, compared to the Aegean Islands. In the Ionian, endemics only persist on the largest islands, and form a very small proportion of the species pool, compared to the Aegean archipelago. Conclusions: The lack of endemism might be attributed to the more recent separation of the Ionian Islands from the mainland and the shorter distance separating them from the mainland. In addition, the Ionian Islands receive higher levels of precipitation and are typically covered by denser and higher vegetation than the Aegean Islands. These conditions favour greater total species richness, but tend to lead to higher numbers of common species compared to threatened and endemic taxa. This study demonstrates that both isolation and precipitation serve as biodiversity drivers, influencing plant species diversity and endemism patterns, of the two Greek archipelagos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent anthropogenic climate change is strongly associated with average shifts toward earlier seasonal timing of activity (phenology) in temperate-zone species. Shifts in phenology have the potential to alter ecological interactions, to the detriment of one or more interacting species. Recent models predict that detrimental phenological mismatch may increasingly occur between plants and their pollinators. One way to test this prediction is to examine data from ecological communities that experience large annual weather fluctuations. Taking this approach, we analyzed interactions over a four-year period among 132 plant species and 665 pollinating insect species within a Mediterranean community. For each plant species we recorded onset and duration of flowering and number of pollinator species. Flowering onset varied among years, and a year of earlier flowering of a species tended to be a year of fewer species pollinating its flowers. This relationship was attributable principally to early-flowering species, suggesting that shifts toward earlier phenology driven by climate change may reduce pollination services due to phenological mismatch. Earlier flowering onset of a species also was associated with prolonged flowering duration, but it is not certain that this will counterbalance any negative effects of lower pollinator species richness on plant reproductive success. Among plants with different life histories, annuals were more severely affected by flowering-pollinator mismatches than perennials. Specialized plant species (those attracting a smaller number of pollinator species) did not experience disproportionate interannual fluctuations in phenology. Thus they do not appear to be faced with disproportionate fluctuations in pollinator species richness, contrary to the expectation that specialists are at greatest risk of losing mutualistic interactions because of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The higher taxon approach could predict soil nematode alpha and beta diversity. [•] Also, functional guilds or trophic groups could serve as a biodiversity surrogate. [•] Both higher taxa and functional surrogates reflect similar community structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The universality of the shape of the species-area relationship (SAR) is subject to regular debate. Recently, Storch et al. (2012) argued that species-area relationships collapse into a single curve at continental scales after the axes are rescaled adjusting the area-axis being to the mean range size of species and the species-axis to the species richness of an area equal to mean range size. It has been claimed that this rescaling generates a universal model, invariant of taxon and continent, and that it is driven by differences in range sizes. Here, we test the universality of the rescaled SAR across scales smaller than the continental level, using presence data for plants, birds and butterflies. We also test an alternative rescaling approach, by using the total extent of the study area and total species richness. At the scales analysed here, we found that the proposed rescaling by Storch et al. adjusts for differences in the extent of the study area and for variation in gamma diversity. Consequently, while the rescaled curves were closely aligned, they did not converge into a single curve. The observed remaining variation is independent of scale and biogeographical region, and is correlated with beta diversity; thus, it reflects the differentiation of species composition in space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land cover diversity is often used as a surrogate of habitat heterogeneity. Nevertheless, its spatial pattern has received limited attention. Here, we examine Corine land cover diversity patterns across Europe, and test (1) if geographical (longitudinal, latitudinal) gradients exist, (2) if the scale of analysis (and specifically the grain of analysis) influences the patterns, and (3) if the thematic resolution affects the results. We estimated diversity landscape metrics for 2818 locations throughout Europe. We analysed the spatial pattern at five grains (0.25, 1, 25, 100 and 625 km2), and for three hierarchical levels of the Corine Land Cover 2000 classification scheme. To account for spatial autocorrelation, we used Clifford’s test. Latitude was significantly correlated with land cover diversity (once spatial autocorrelation was taken into account) only at large grain sizes. Longitude, with a few exceptions at fine grain, was not correlated to land cover diversity. The spatial pattern of land cover diversity is scale-dependent, with spatial pattern at fine grain (<1 km2) being statistically independent of the pattern at large grain (625 km2). Also the grain of the analysis affected the spatial autocorrelation of land cover diversity. Fine grain analysis displayed autocorrelation, but over short (hundreds of kilometres) distances, while large grain analysis displayed autocorrelation over longer distances (thousands of kilometres). Increasing the detail of the thematic resolution seems to have effects similar to increasing the grain size. The thematic resolution in certain cases influenced the results qualitatively and thus inference from low-resolution landscape analysis should be done with caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Nowadays that biodiversity monitoring is a legal obligation in many countries, monitoring implementation still lags behind the needs for efficient conservation. This is mainly due to three limiting factors that are rarely available for an exhaustive diversity survey, i.e. time consuming, expensive and demands high level of expertise. We propose an alternative monitoring scheme based on the higher taxon approach. This approach allows rapid tracking of biodiversity changes and the utilization of data collected by non-expert volunteers. Here we show, for the first time, that temporal changes in genera or family richness are strongly correlated to, and have similar spatial pattern characteristics as changes in species richness for the breeding birds in New York State. Changes in genera richness proved more reliable in predicting changes in species richness than changes in family richness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

1. Halting biodiversity loss, a major environmental challenge, relies on the understanding of species richness patterns. The assessment of species richness is often hampered by limited taxonomic knowledge and the general dearth of trained systematists. Research has shown that we can predict the number of species in a community by the number of higher order taxonomic units present. Here, we test whether we need to know all the genera, families or orders in order to do so. Further, the number of common species in a region is a good predictor of total richness and we test if this predictability translates to using higher taxa. 2. We used data from 240 sites from the Natura 2000 network of protected areas in Greece, including 5148 plant species and subspecies, which are grouped in 1113 genera 174 families and 56 orders. We correlated species richness with the number of common genera, families or orders present. The analysis was repeated using the number of the most speciose higher orders instead of the most common. 3. We found that we do not need to know all higher order taxa present, in order to predict species richness. If we know how many out of the 30 most common orders are present, we can reliably predict the number of species. Similar results were obtained if we know how many of the 60 most common families or 200 most common genera are present. 4. Equally good results were obtained using the same numbers of the most speciose higher orders. 5. Synthesis and applications. Our analysis demonstrates that species richness can be predicted from the number of common or more speciose genera, families and orders present. These predictions hold without complete sampling of these higher taxa. The implication is that we need only limited systematic knowledge, resources and effort in order to predict species richness. Assuming these findings hold in other taxonomic groups and in other regions, we argue that the uncertainty introduced by limited knowledge of the systematics ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The sea surface temperature (SST) in loggerhead turtle breeding areas affects the species reproductive biology. Less is known about the effects of changes in SST in the species foraging grounds. We used nesting data for the Mediterranean loggerhead turtle population breeding on the Greek island of Zakynthos to study the effect of SST in the population foraging grounds upon the initiation of nesting and the number of clutches laid. We found that the climatic conditions (SST) in the foraging grounds affected the population nesting phenology in the short term (i.e. within the same year); warmer years triggered an earlier onset of nesting. However, the effect of foraging grounds SST upon nesting is comparatively less important than the local conditions at the nesting ground. Although nesting phenology seems to depend on current''s year foraging grounds SST the number of nests in our study rookery were negatively correlated with SSTs recorded 2 years prior nesting, with higher SST leading to fewer nests. From this point of view, climate change at the foraging grounds may influence the reproductive phenology of loggerheads. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Global climate change is likely to have an important influence on the phenology, behaviour and population dynamics of many species. We investigate climatic related changes in the breeding phenology of Mediterranean loggerhead marine turtles Caretta caretta over a 19 year period and the potential relationship between these changes and reproductive success and performance. We found that the studied population has experienced fluctuating sea surface temperatures (SST) with an increasing trend during the last century. With increasing spring SST there is a trend towards earlier nesting. However, there is no significant relationship between SST and nesting season, defined as the duration between the first recorded emergence and the last nest laid. Our analyses indicate that marine turtles display phenological changes, and thus maintain favorable thermal conditions at the nesting sites. Furthermore, increasing spring SST was correlated with decreasing clutch size and increasing hatching success that resulted in an apparent lack of correlation between SST and hatchling production. This apparent independence might be misleading since it only holds for a limited range of SST values. Thus, if we estimate the effect of climate change on loggerhead population growth as neutral, based on the apparent independence between SST and total number of hatchlings, we will be underestimating the population extinction risk. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A critical issue in conservation biology is the establishment of a strong relationship between species richness and a surrogate index. Such a relationship could provide the basis for the establishment of cost effective and easy to monitor methods for measuring biodiversity, providing an alternative for the prioritization of sites for conservation. We found that richness of species of conservation interest could reliably be predicted from the richness of higher order taxa, such as genus and family, in amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Furthermore, the networks of reserve sites selected based upon the richness of genera or families were as effective in including species diversity, as the ones selected based upon species richness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Aim To examine the way in which ‘area’ and ‘habitat diversity’ interact in shaping species richness and to find a simple and valid way to express this interaction. Location The Natura 2000 network of terrestrial protected areas in Greece, covering approximately 16% of the national territory. Methods We used the Natura 2000 framework, which provides a classification scheme for natural habitat types, to quantify habitat heterogeneity. We analysed data for the plant species composition in 16,143 quadrats in which 5044 species and subspecies of higher plants were recorded. We built a simple mathematical model that incorporates the effect of habitat diversity on the species–area relationship (SAR). Results Our analysis showed that habitat diversity was correlated with area. However, keeping habitat diversity constant, species richness was related to area; while keeping area constant, species richness was related to habitat diversity. Comparing the SAR of the 237 sites we found that the slope of the species–area curve was related to habitat diversity. Main conclusions Discussion of the causes of the SAR has often focused on the primacy of area per se versus habitat heterogeneity, even though the two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive and should be considered jointly. We find that increasing habitat diversity affects the SAR in different ways, but the dominant effect is to increase the slope of the SAR. While a full model fit typically includes a variety of terms involving both area and habitat richness, we find that the effect of habitat diversity can be reduced to a linear perturbation of the slope of the species accumulation curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed the dynamics of a plant–pollinator interaction network of a scrub community surveyed over four consecutive years. Species composition within the annual networks showed high temporal variation. Temporal dynamics were also evident in the topology of the network, as interactions among plants and pollinators did not remain constant through time. This change involved both the number and the identity of interacting partners. Strikingly, few species and interactions were consistently present in all four annual plant–pollinator networks (53% of the plant species, 21% of the pollinator species and 4.9% of the interactions). The high turnover in species-to-species interactions was mainly the effect of species turnover ( c. 70% in pairwise comparisons among years), and less the effect of species flexibility to interact with new partners ( c. 30%). We conclude that specialization in plant–pollinator interactions might be highly overestimated when measured over short periods of time. This is because many plant or pollinator species appear as specialists in 1 year, but tend to be generalists or to interact with different partner species when observed in other years. The high temporal plasticity in species composition and interaction identity coupled with the low variation in network structure properties (e.g. degree centralization, connectance, nestedness, average distance and network diameter) imply (i) that tight and specialized coevolution might not be as important as previously suggested and (ii) that plant–pollinator interaction networks might be less prone to detrimental effects of disturbance than previously thought. We suggest that this may be due to the opportunistic nature of plant and animal species regarding the available partner resources they depend upon at any particular time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this study we experimentally manipulated the precipitation pattern (frequency and intensity) in a Mediterranean pine forest on Mt. Holomon (northern Greece) in order to investigate the response of soil microarthropods (Collembola and oribatid mites). Our experimental treatments included drought, frequent and infrequent irrigation and lasted for 4 months. The treatments affected soil water content, maximum soil temperature and diversity of soil microarthropods. Compared to the undisturbed surrounding area, drought decreased soil water content as well as microarthropod species richness and increased maximum soil temperature. Irrigation treatments increased soil water content and microarthropod species richness. Infrequent irrigation increased maximum soil temperature. Oribatid mites and Collembola responded differently to the irrigation treatments. The collembolan community showed higher species evenness and diversity in the frequently irrigated plots and the oribatid mite community in the infrequently irrigated ones. Our results indicate that irrigation pattern (and the corresponding changes in soil moisture) will have an impact on soil ecosystems in complicated non-linear ways. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Assessing spatial and temporal patterns of biodiversity change is essential to understand how communities vary over time and confront to environmental changes for the resilience of ecosystem functioning. We use data from two bird atlases of Britain collected during the breeding periods 1988–1991 and 2008–2011 to measure temporal β‐diversity of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic dimensions and examine the relationship and the level of congruence of the three dimensions of temporal β‐diversity and their respective partitioned components (turnover‐nestedness). Temporal β‐diversity, turnover and nestedness patterns were highly congruent for the taxonomic and phylogenetic dimension, although these dimensions were weakly associated with the functional dimension. We found higher levels of temporal changes for the taxonomic (mean Jaccard β‐diversity 0.27) and phylogenetic (mean Jaccard β‐diversity 0.21) dimensions than for the functional dimension (mean Jaccard β‐diversity 0.09), implying that despite the changes in species composition the functional composition of the communities remained less affected. For taxonomic and phylogenetic dimensions, turnover contributed more than nestedness to shaping β‐diversity, while for functional β‐diversity the two components contributed similarly. Communities at higher altitudes were also more functionally similar in 20 years but with more changes in taxonomic and phylogenetic diversity possibly due to environmental filtering. We hypothesize that the low congruence might be due to species with extreme trait values persisting throughout time and retaining the volume of functional space and thus contributing to the low temporal change of functional diversity despite the high levels of change in species composition, perhaps an indication of functional "stability." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Functional redundancy, the coexistence of species with similar functional roles, is of critical importance for ecosystem function stability. However, drivers of functional redundancy remain relatively poorly understood. Here, we analyzed four traits of British butterflies and aimed to identify the biotic and abiotic factors that affect the spatial patterns of functional redundancy. The most important factor was taxonomic diversity, with species-rich communities having the highest level of functional redundancy. Temperature was associated with redundancy and with different facets of taxonomic and functional diversity. However, although warmer areas hosted species-rich communities, redundancy was greatest in areas of intermediate mean annual temperature and declined at higher temperatures. This might imply that despite the positive effect of increased temperature on butterfly diversity, warmer and species-rich areas are vulnerable, perhaps due to the land uses dominating in these regions. Landscape heterogeneity promoted species richness, functional redundancy and variation in species and functional composition of the butterfly assemblages, underscoring the importance of maintaining diverse landscapes. Biodiversity promotes the functioning of ecosystems, and functional redundancy safeguards this functioning against environmental changes. However, what drives functional redundancy remains unclear. We analyzed taxonomic diversity, functional diversity (richness and β-diversity) and functional redundancy patterns of British butterflies. We explored the effect of temperature and landscape-related variables on richness and redundancy using generalized additive models, and on β-diversity using generalized dissimilarity models. The species richness-functional richness relationship was saturating, indicating functional redundancy in species-rich communities. Assemblages did not deviate from random expectations regarding functional richness. Temperature exerted a significant effect on all diversity aspects and on redundancy, with the latter relationship being unimodal. Landscape-related variables played a role in driving observed patterns. Although taxonomic and functional β-diversity were highly congruent, the model of taxonomic β-diversity explained more deviance than the model of functional β-diversity did. Species-rich butterfly assemblages exhibited functional redundancy. Climate- and landscape-related variables emerged as significant drivers of diversity and redundancy. Τaxonomic β-diversity was more strongly associated with the environmental gradient, while functional β-diversity was driven more strongly by stochasticity. Temperature promoted species richness and β-diversity, but warmer areas exhibited lower levels of functional redundancy. This might be related to the land uses prevailing in warmer areas (e.g., agricultural intensification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of predicting the distribution of alien species has long been a focus of invasion ecology. Herein, we assessed biotic and abiotic factors from the 1980s as potential predictors of alien bird species patterns 20 years later in the state of New York. To assess the ability of each factor to predict future alien species patterns, we analysed the influence of biotic (native taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity, and human population density) and abiotic (climate and land use) factors from the 1980s on the observed alien species richness patterns in the 2000s and the temporal change in the composition of the alien communities between the 1980s and the 2000s using both single-predictor and multivariate models. Alien species richness from the 1980s was a reliable predictor of the alien species richness and temporal beta-diversity patterns in the 2000s. Among abiotic factors, maximum temperature and agricultural land-uses constituted sufficient predictors of future alien species richness and better predictors than the native biotic factors. The performance of single-predictor models was generally weaker in predicting temporal alien beta-diversity; however, past alien species richness and maximum temperature again outperformed the other factors. Predictions and management decisions should focus on warm and agricultural areas, as well as areas with an already high number of established alien species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variations in environmental parameters (e.g. temperature) that form part of global climate change have been associated with shifts in the timing of seasonal events for a broad range of organisms. Most studies evaluating such phenological shifts of individual taxa have focused on a limited number of locations, making it difficult to assess how such shifts vary regionally across a species range. Here, by using 1445 records of the date of first nesting for loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta) at different breeding sites, on different continents and in different years across a broad latitudinal range (25 -- 39° ′N), we demonstrate that the gradient of the relationship between temperature and the date of first breeding is steeper at higher latitudes, i.e. the phenological responses to temperature appear strongest at the poleward range limit. These findings support the hypothesis that biological changes in response to climate change will be most acute at the poleward range limits and are in accordance with the predictions of MacArthur's hypothesis that poleward range limit for species range is environmentally limited. Our findings imply that the poleward populations of loggerheads are more sensitive to climate variations and thus they might display the impacts of climate change sooner and more prominently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often climatic niche models predict that any change in climatic conditions will impact species abundance or distribution. However, the accuracy of models that just incorporate climatic information to predict future species habitat use is widely debated. Alternatively, environmental conditions may simply need to be above some minimum threshold of climatic suitability, at which point, other factors drive population size. Using the example of nesting sites of loggerhead sea turtles ( Caretta caretta ) in the Mediterranean (n = 105), we developed climatic niche models to examine whether a climatic suitability threshold could be identified as a climatic indicator in order for large populations of a widespread species to exist. We then assessed the climatic suitability of sites above and below this threshold in the past (∼1900) and future (∼2100). Most large sites that are currently above the climatic threshold were above the threshold in the past and future, particularly when future nesting seasonality shifted to start 1–2 months earlier. Our analyses highlight the importance of future phenological shifts for maintaining suitability. Our results provide a positive outlook for sea turtle conservation, suggesting that climatic conditions may remain suitable in the future at sites that currently support large nesting populations. Our study also provides an alternative way of interpreting the outputs of climatic niche models, by generating a threshold as an index of a minimum climatic suitability required to sustain large populations. This type of approach offers the possibility to benefit from information provided by climate-driven models, while reducing their inherent uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: We explored the range shifts of alien and native birds, the responses of alien and native β‐diversity to abiotic factors, and the effect of native diversity on alien β‐diversity in two time periods. Location: Great Britain. Time period: 1968–1972, 2007–2011. Taxa studied: Breeding birds. Methods: We estimated range shifts of alien and native species between the periods 1968–1972 and 2007–2011. Following, β‐diversity of alien and native communities was estimated by Jaccard pairwise index (βtot) and partitioned into richness difference and replacement component for each period. We built abiotic generalized dissimilarity models including abiotic factors for alien and native βtot and their components and a biotic model for aliens including native taxonomic and functional diversity as predictors. Results: Most alien and half native species expanded into new regions during the 40‐year period. The native species range shifts did not exhibit a clear pattern along the longitudinal or latitudinal gradient, while alien species tended to move north‐westwards. The richness difference was the dominant component of alien β‐diversity, and the replacement component contributed mostly to native β‐diversity. Alien β‐diversity responded similarly but less strongly than native β‐diversity, to the abiotic gradients. Temperature‐related variables, distance and precipitation were the most important abiotic drivers of native and alien β‐diversity. The biotic model of alien β‐diversity explained more deviance than the abiotic model. Main conclusions Alien species expanded into new regions over the 40 years, with alien β‐diversity driven mostly by species gains. The effect of environmental filtering on alien communities was weaker compared with native communities but was slightly reinforced in the second period compared with the first period, highlighting the role of environmental change in shaping diversity patterns. Native diversity played a key role in driving alien β‐diversity, through biotic interactions or/and by reflecting climatic suitability or niche availability for aliens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions Do the mechanisms driving community assembly differ between two islands of different age and history of vegetation development? How does sampling scale affect the strength that each assembly mechanism poses on the assembly of plant communities? Location Volcanic islands (Palea Kameni and Nea Kameni) of Santorini Archipelago, Greece. Methods Functional diversity has been proposed as a framework for discriminating among mechanisms of community assembly, such as habitat filtering, limiting similarity and random assembly. We investigated four plant communities in two sea-born volcanic islands. We recorded plant diversity at scales from 1 m2 to 64 m2. We calculated three indices of functional diversity: functional richness, functional evenness and functional divergence, using 26 functional traits (including vegetative characteristics, ecological preferences and regenerative characteristics). We used null model analysis to test for two different assembly mechanisms: habitat filtering and limiting similarity or random assembly. Results The assemblage of the four communities was complex and did not follow a single mechanism. In most cases, finer-scale patterns indicated randomness, while coarser scales revealed more structured communities. In the older island, the scrub community was mainly defined by limiting similarity. The therophytic community displayed a limited range of functional traits, indicating mainly habitat filtering, but within this range, the evenness of the distribution indicated limiting similarity. On the younger island, the range of traits did not differ from random. However, within this range of traits, one therophytic community showed signs of limiting similarity, while the second therophytic community displayed uneven functional trait distribution, indicating mainly habitat filtering. The three indices reflected different facets of functional diversity and were not correlated, thus we may argue that they are not redundant, and we even detected different mechanisms of assembly within the same community. Conclusions The functional diversity of the therophytic communities in the younger island implied no specific assembly mechanism; perhaps due to its age, the community is still at the early stages of colonization (i.e. stochastic processes, such as arrival of new species, prevail). In the older island, the lack of disturbances for a long period allowed the establishment of communities assembled by specific mechanisms, such as competition and habitat filtering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human health and well-being presuppose environmental quality. Several studies have documented the indicative role of land use types in environmental quality. However, the exact role of land use composition on disease distribution has remained scientifically vague. We assessed the congruence of diseases’ distribution with land use composition, focusing on high environmental quality areas, defined as tranquil areas with view to indicating places offering well-being. Landscape composition is linked to the presence of diseases across 51 prefectures of Greece. Agricultural and natural land use types proved to be the main drivers of disease distribution. Tranquility demonstrated a strong negative correlation with population density, thus could be considered as a quantitative spatial index of life-quality. We concluded that the landscape context affects the dominance of diseases’ patterns. Special emphasis should be put on the role of tranquil areas in human health and the relative environmental health policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights: [•] We aimed to unravel the criteria used for prioritizing Greek Natura 2000 sites. [•] Management history criteria (e.g. management actions) were the critical components of the selection process. [•] The Greek prioritized sub-network was not considered as optimal based on ecological factors. [•] Socioeconomic drivers were undervalued in the prioritization process. [•] Conservation effort on sites consistently scoring high for all criteria is important. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Empirical test of functional differentiation of forests at a regional scale. • Functional identity but not diversity differentiates forest community types. • Decoupled functional diversity and identity patterns highlight their complementarity. We studied the differentiation among plant communities of deciduous broadleaved and mountain coniferous forests in terms of functional diversity and identity at a regional scale (northern and central Greece). We asked if patterns of functional differentiation among communities are consistent between the overstorey and understorey layers and if they can be influenced by deep past environmental conditions. Functional Richness (FRic) and Functional Dispersion (FDis), as well as their standardized effect sizes, were employed to assess the multivariate functional diversity of the community types. In contrast, single-trait Community Weighted Means (CWMs) were used as surrogates of functional identity. The aforementioned indices were calculated for three datasets, namely all the vascular plant taxa found in individual vegetation plots (total community), all phanerophyte (tree and shrub) taxa (overstorey) and all non-phanerophyte vascular plant taxa (understorey). We found that community types and especially four broad forest types (beech, ravine, pine and oak forests) are well differentiated in terms of functional composition (identity), as indicated by Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS). After conducting an NMDS for the three datasets, functional identity based on the total floristic composition was found to be the best discriminator of the studied communities. However, contrasting patterns were found for some specific traits or their categories between overstorey and understorey layers. The patterns of functional diversity of the community types (based on multivariate indices), revealed by calculating the standardized effect sizes of FRic and FDis based on the richness null model, did not differ substantially from random expectations for most of the studied community types when the dataset of all the vascular plant taxa was analyzed. However, the patterns revealed for the overstorey layer differed from those for the understorey layer. For the latter layer, the clustered structure was revealed in many community types based on the ses.FDis metric. Indications of deep past influence on the functional composition were found for certain community types (i.e. ravine forests) based on single-trait metrics, but no indication of such influence was found based on multivariate indices. Our findings highlight the complementarity and the additive explanatory value of the simultaneous use of single- and multi-trait approaches and their application to different layers in forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The aim of this study is to explore the burning pattern of the catastrophic wildfires that occurred in Peloponnisos, southern Greece, in 2007. These fires caused the loss of 67 lives and were recognized as the most extreme natural disaster in the country''s recent history. We compare the 2007 fires against fuel availability across the landscape in the light of a null model using Monte-Carlo randomization and against the fire pattern for the preceding period, 2000–2006. Additionally we applied a multi-response permutation-procedure test, a data-driven method free from assumptions about the underlying distribution. The study contributes to the ongoing debate over the relative importance of fuel versus weather in explaining large and intense wildfires. While the majority of the 2007 wildfires burned low-elevation fire-prone ecosystems, a part of them moved to non-fire-prone ecosystems, indicating a departure from the burning pattern of recent history. The CORINE land-cover categories most affected by fire included agricultural lands highly interspersed with large areas of natural vegetation followed by sclerophyllous vegetation, transitional woodland shrubs, complex cultivation patterns and olive groves. These reflect greater fuel accumulation through the encroachment of natural vegetation in abandoned fields as well as changing patterns of land-use. The rising proportions of humid and sub-humid areas burned are clearly related to weather patterns. The synergistic effect between fuel and weather helps explain the unusually large 2007 wildfires in Peloponnisos. This change may imply a climatically driven alteration of the established fire-regime promoted by fuel accumulation that portends major ecological consequences. The ecological disaster foreseen is justified by the lack of specific adaptations to cope with fire in non fire-prone plant communities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The description of the landscape is based on the visualization of geographic features and the representation of their attributes. Although sound is a major component of any environment, its cartographic representation is limited mainly on noise mapping and in urban or sub-urban areas. Soundscape is a term that describes the acoustic relation between the environment and the individual in a landscape context, considering all kinds of interactions between space, sound and humans. The representation of the soundscape at a spatial level would support many applications such as geographic analysis, ecosystem evaluation, environmental education, landscape management, urban or rural planning and protection of sonic particularities. This paper proposes a methodology for the mapping of both quantitative and qualitative attributes of a rural soundscape, which is described through the study of the acoustic environment around a protected wetland in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern water resource management requires biomonitoring of the structure and functioning of freshwater ecosystems, which may be better illuminated by functional trait distribution patterns and responses across human-induced pressure gradients. In this study, we applied the RLQ, the fourth-corner and their novel combination methods, in order to assess the relationship between the distribution of 30 aquatic macrophyte functional traits and 14 indicators of anthropogenic pressures across 16 freshwater lakes. Our findings showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between the distribution of specific functional traits and anthropogenic pressures. Eutrophication was the dominant pressure and the shift from a submerged-macrophyte dominated vegetation community to an emergent one was the most important functional response. Aerial reproduction and dispersal traits were found to replace water-related ones under higher nutrient concentrations. Trophic and light preferences of macrophytic species increased, while their leaf morphology was found to change from tubular/capillary leaf types with low leaf area values to entire leaf types with greater leaf area. These results provide hints on the changes in ecosystem functioning occurring as a response to human-induced drivers. Therefore, this assessment approach could provide important support to the tasks of biomonitoring, conservation and management planning in freshwater ecosystems. Image 1 • RLQ and fourth-corner combined were applied to assess traits-environment relations. • Strong correlation found between aquatic plant traits and anthropogenic pressures. • Emergent life forms replace submerged ones in increased eutrophication levels. • Reproduction, dispersal, trophic, light, and leaf traits respond to eutrophication. • Trait assessment approaches can support conservation and restoration management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the mechanisms of community assembly is of great importance to biogeography and ecology. Simultaneous investigation of the functional and phylogenetic facets of diversity has been proposed as a useful approach that allows inferences about such mechanisms. This study applies such an approach to explore diversity and structure within and among the main plant community types of mountainous forests in northern and central Greece. Functional and phylogenetic diversity and structure were measured in 25 community types of broadleaved deciduous and mountainous coniferous forests. Functional richness and Faith's phylogenetic diversity were used to assess diversity, while mean pairwise functional and phylogenetic distances were used to investigate structure. Relationships between both facets of diversity and structure, as well as community types, were tested using boosted regression trees separately for all vascular plant taxa and taxa occurring in the forest understorey. Phylogenetic diversity was positively correlated with functional diversity, but phylogenetic structure was not a good predictor of functional structure. The understorey dataset revealed non-random structure for more vegetation plots than the dataset with all taxa. Habitat effects, represented by community types, were found to be better predictors of functional structure than phylogenetic structure, highlighting the need to account for habitat variability in studies of community assembly. In our study system, the two diversity facets provide complementary information on the structure of community types since most of the vegetation plots studied were found statistically significantly structured for one diversity facet (functionally clustered or phylogenetically overdispersed) and random for the other. Our results indicate that functional and phylogenetic measures provide different insights into the mechanisms driving the assembly of the forest community types studied. • Functional and phylogenetic measures provide complementary information. • Habitat effects are good predictors of functional structure. • Forest layers are characterized by partially different assembly mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the patterns of species richness and their environmental drivers, remains a central theme in ecological research and especially in the continental scales where many conservation decisions are made. Here, we analyzed the patterns of species richness from amphibians, reptiles and mammals at the EU level. We used two different data sources for each taxon: expert-drawn species range maps, and presence/absence atlases. As environmental drivers, we considered climate and land cover. Land cover is increasingly the focus of research, but there still is no consensus on how to classify land cover to distinct habitat classes, so we analyzed the CORINE land cover data with three different levels of thematic resolution (resolution of classification scheme ˗ less to more detailed). We found that the two types of species richness data explored in this study yielded different richness maps. Although, we expected expert-drawn range based estimates of species richness to exceed those from atlas data (due to the assumption that species are present in all locations throughout their region), we found that in many cases the opposite is true (the extreme case is the reptiles where more than half of the atlas based estimates were greater than the expert-drawn range based estimates). Also, we detected contrasting information on the richness drivers of biodiversity patterns depending on the dataset used. For atlas based richness estimates, landscape attributes played more important role than climate while for expert-drawn range based richness estimates climatic variables were more important (for the ectothermic amphibians and reptiles). Finally we found that the thematic resolution of the land cover classification scheme, also played a role in quantifying the effect of land cover diversity, with more detailed thematic resolution increasing the relative contribution of landscape attributes in predicting species richness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate and land use changes are major threats to biodiversity. To preserve biodiversity, networks of protected areas have been established worldwide, like the Natura 2000 network across the European Union (EU). Currently, this reserve network consists of more than 26000 sites covering more than 17% of EU terrestrial territory. Its efficiency to mitigate the detrimental effects of land use and climate change remains an open research question. Here, we examined the potential current and future geographical ranges of four birds of prey under scenarios of both land use and climate changes. By using graph theory, we examined how the current Natura 2000 network will perform in regard to the conservation of these species. This approach determines the importance of a site in regard to the total network and its connectivity. We found that sites becoming unsuitable due to climate change are not a random sample of the network, but are less connected and contribute less to the overall connectivity than the average site and thus their loss does not disrupt the full network. Hence, the connectivity of the remaining network changed only slightly from present day conditions. Our findings highlight the need to establish species-specific management plans with flexible conservation strategies ensuring protection under potential future range expansions. Aquila pomarina is predicted to disappear from the southern part of its range and to become restricted to northeastern Europe. Gyps fulvus, Aquila chrysaetos, and Neophron percnopterus are predicted to locally lose some suitable sites; hence, some isolated small populations may become extinct. However, their geographical range and metapopulation structure will remain relatively unaffected throughout Europe. These species would benefit more from an improved habitat quality and management of the existing network of protected areas than from increased connectivity or assisted migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the potential contribution of the persistent soil seed bank in post-disturbance restoration of the herb layer in a long-term overgrazed, mixed oak forest (NW Greece). We examined the impacts of grazing on plant richness and density in the soil seed bank in regard to the different dispersal and life strategy types of the herb layer taxa. Soil seed bank was qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed and contrasting plant guilds were defined according to life strategy type and dispersal mode. Soil seed bank differences between a) the upper and lower soil layers and b) plant functional guild pairs (ruderals vs. non ruderals, including typical forest taxa, and physically- vs. animal-dispersed plants) were statistically tested in overgrazed and sporadically grazed plots. Moreover, correlations in soil seed bank species dominance between overgrazed and sporadically grazed plots were examined by Spearman's Rank correlation. The majority of seeds were found in the upper (0-5 cm) soil layer. Seed density in the deeper (5-10 cm) soil layer was rather poor and did not differ significantly between overgrazed and sporadically grazed plots. In the upper soil layer, both seed density and plant species richness were significantly lower in the overgrazed plots. Overgrazing reduced both species richness and seed density of non-ruderal species in general and typical forest herbs in particular, while it did not affect ruderal species richness and density. Plant species richness and seed density of animal-dispersed taxa were reduced by overgrazing while physically-dispersed species were not affected; it is therefore concluded that large herds of grazers fenced in relatively small areas cannot act as efficient dispersal vectors of the former species. Our findings suggest that, upon cessation of grazing, the soil seed bank is rather inadequate to restore the herb layer of overgrazed forest sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing biodiversity crisis reinforces the urgent need to unravel diversity patterns and the underlying processes shaping them. Although taxonomic diversity has been extensively studied and is considered the common currency, simultaneously conserving other facets of diversity (e.g., functional diversity) is critical to ensure ecosystem functioning and the provision of ecosystem services. Here, we explored the effect of key climatic factors (temperature, precipitation, temperature seasonality, and precipitation seasonality) and factors reflecting human pressures (agricultural land, urban land, land-cover diversity, and human population density) on the functional diversity (functional richness and Rao's quadratic entropy) and species richness of amphibians (68 species), reptiles (107 species), and mammals (176 species) in Europe. We explored the relationship between different predictors and diversity metrics using generalized additive mixed model analysis, to capture non-linear relationships and to account for spatial autocorrelation. We found that at this broad continental spatial scale, climatic variables exerted a significant effect on the functional diversity and species richness of all taxa. On the other hand, variables reflecting human pressures contributed significantly in the models even though their explanatory power was lower compared to climatic variables. In most cases, functional richness and Rao's quadratic entropy responded similarly to climate and human pressures. In conclusion, climate is the most influential factor in shaping both the functional diversity and species richness patterns of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals in Europe. However, incorporating factors reflecting human pressures complementary to climate could be conducive to us understanding the drivers of functional diversity and richness patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities like urbanization and agriculture affect spatial biodiversity patterns. The presence and activities of humans richly benefit alien species, but native species usually decline in human-impacted areas. Considering that the richness of alien and native species are inter-related, we explored the effect of human population density, human-related land uses (agricultural and urban), and natural land area on avian (alien and native) species richness of Massachusetts for two time periods using Generalized Additive Models. Avian alien species richness increased with native species richness in both time periods. Despite the predominant role of native species richness as a major driver of alien species richness, human activities play an important additional role in shaping species richness patterns of established aliens. Human-related land uses (urban and agricultural) and human population favored alien species richness in both time periods. Counter to expectations, human activities were also positively associated to native avian species richness. Possible explanations of these patterns may include habitat heterogeneity, increased availability of resources, and reduced predation risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elevational gradients provide a unique opportunity to explore species responses to changing environmental conditions. Here, we focus on an elevational gradient in Crete, a climate-vulnerable Mediterranean plant biodiversity hotspot and explore the diversity patterns and underlying mechanisms of different plant life forms. We found that the significant differences in life forms' elevational and environmental ranges are reflected in α- diversity (species richness at local scale), γ-diversity (species richness at regional scale) and β-diversity (variation in species composition). The α- and γ-diversity decreased with elevation, while β-diversity followed a hump-shaped relationship, with the peak varying between life forms. However, β-deviation (deviation from null expectations) varied significantly with elevation but was life formindependent. This suggests that species composition is shaped by the size of the available species pool which depends on life form, but also by other deterministic or stochastic processes that act in a similar way for different life forms. The strength of these processes varies with elevation, with hotter–drier conditions and increased human activities filtering species composition at lowlands and large-scale processes determining the species pool size overriding local ecological processes at higher elevations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire, a frequent disturbance in the Mediterranean, affects pollinator communities. We explored the response of major pollinator guilds to fire severity, across a fire‐severity gradient at different spatial scales. We show that the abundance of all pollinator groups responded to fire severity, and that bees and beetles showed in addition a significant species‐diversity response. Bees, sawflies, and wasps responded to fire severity at relatively small spatial scales (250–300 m), whereas flies and beetles responded at larger spatial scales. The response of bees, sawflies, and wasps was unimodal, as predicted by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis, whereas flies and beetles showed a negative response. A possible explanation is that the observed patterns (spatial scale and type of response) are driven by taxa‐specific ecological and life‐history traits, such as nesting preference and body size, as well as the availability of resources in the postfire landscape. Our observational study provides an insight into the effect of fire severity on pollinators. However, future research exploring the explicit link between the pre‐ and postfire landscape structure and pollinator traits and responses is required for further establishment and understanding of cause–effect relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]