Benchmarking plant diversity of Palaearctic grasslands and other open habitats
© 2021 The Authors. ; 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 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. ; GrassPlot development has been supported by the Bavarian Research Alliance (BayIntAn_UBT_2017_58), the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS); IB, CorM, JAC, IGM, DGM, MHe, DL and MTo were supported by the Basque Government (IT936‐16); CorM, IAx, MCh, JDa, PD, MHá, ZL, ZPr, EŠ and LT were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (19‐28491X); TR was supported by the Estonian Research Council (PUT1173); RJP was funded by the Strategic Research Programme of the Scottish Government's Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Services Division"; SBa was supported by the GINOP‐2.3.2‐15‐2016‐00019 project; GFi was partially supported by the MIUR initiative "Department of excellence" (Law 232/2016)"; BJA was funded by the Spanish Research Agency (grant AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033); AK, VB, IM, DS, IV and DV were supported by the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (2020.01/0140); MP and AH were supported by the Estonian Research Council (PRG874, PRG609), and the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence EcolChange); Data collection of HCP was funded by FORMAS (Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Science and Spatial Planning) and The Swedish Institute; JR was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (grant No. 20‐09895S) and the long‐term developmental project of the Czech Academy of Sciences (RVO 67985939); ATRA was funded by the Grant of Excellence Departments, MIUR‐Italy (ARTICOLO 1, COMMI 314 – 337 LEGGE 232/2016); JMA was supported by Carl Tryggers stiftelse för vetenskaplig forskning and Qatar Petroleum; AAli was supported by the Jiangsu Science and Technology Special Project (Grant No. BX2019084), and Metasequoia Faculty Research Startup Funding at Nanjing Forestry University (Grant No. 163010230), and he is currently supported by Hebei University through Faculty Research Startup Funding Program; ZB was supported by the NKFI K 124796 grant; The GLORIA‐ Aragón project of JLBA was funded by the Dirección General de Cambio Climático del Gobierno de Aragón (Spain); MCs and LDem were supported by DG Environment through the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism and Barbara Knowles Fund, in collaboration with Pogány‐havas Association, Romania; JDa was partially supported by long‐term research development project no. RVO 67985939 of the Czech Academy of Sciences; BD and OV were supported by the NKFI KH 126476, NKFI KH 130338, NKFI FK 124404 and NKFI FK 135329 grants; BD, OV and AKe were supported by the Bolyai János Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; BE was funded by the Environmental Department of the Tyrolean Federal State Government, the MAB Programme of the Austrian Academy of Science, the Mountain Agriculture Research Unit and the Alpine Research Centre Obergurgl of Innsbruck University. The GLORIA projects of BE were funded by the EU project no. EVK2‐CT‐2000‐00056, the Earth System Sciences Program of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (project MEDIALPS), the Amt für Naturparke, Autonome Provinz Bozen‐Südtirol, the Südtiroler Wissenschaftsfonds and the Tiroler Wissenschaftsfonds; RGG was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Research to sample GLORIA sites in central Spain (CGL 2008‐00901/BOS) and present works by the Autonomous Region of Madrid (REMEDINAL TE‐CM, S2018/EMT‐4338); MJ was supporteLatviaed by Latvia Grant No. 194051; NP and SŠ were partly supported by the Slovenian Research Agency, core fundings P1‐0403 and J7‐1822.
