Global patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity

Abstract

Global patterns of regional (gamma) plant diversity are relatively well known, but whether these patterns hold for local communities, and the dependence on spatial grain, remain controversial. Using data on 170,272 georeferenced local plant assemblages, we created global maps of alpha diversity (local species richness) for vascular plants at three different spatial grains, for forests and non-forests. We show that alpha diversity is consistently high across grains in some regions (for example, Andean-Amazonian foothills), but regional ‘scaling anomalies’ (deviations from the positive correlation) exist elsewhere, particularly in Eurasian temperate forests with disproportionally higher fine-grained richness and many African tropical forests with disproportionally higher coarse-grained richness. The influence of different climatic, topographic and biogeographical variables on alpha diversity also varies across grains. Our multi-grain maps return a nuanced understanding of vascular plant biodiversity patterns that complements classic maps of biodiversity hotspots and will improve predictions of global change effects on biodiversity.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Sabatini, FM Jiménez-Alfaro, B Jandt, U Chytrý, M Field, R Kessler, M Lenoir, J Schrodt, F Wiser, SK Arfin Khan, MAS Attorre, F Cayuela, L De Sanctis, M Dengler, J Haider, S Hatim, MZ Indreica, A Jansen, F Pauchard, A Peet, RK Petřík, P Pillar, VD Sandel, B Schmidt, M Tang, Z van Bodegom, P Vassilev, K Violle, C Alvarez-Davila, E Davidar, P Dolezal, J Hérault, B Galán-de-Mera, A Jiménez, J Kambach, S Kepfer-Rojas, S Kreft, H Lezama, F Linares-Palomino, R Monteagudo Mendoza, A N’Dja, JK Phillips, OL https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8993-6168 Rivas-Torres, G Sklenář, P Speziale, K Strohbach, BJ Vásquez Martínez, R Wang, H-F Wesche, K Bruelheide, H
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Dates:	Published: 1 September 2022 Published (online): 1 September 2022 Accepted: 13 July 2022
Institution:	The University of Leeds
Academic Units:	The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Publications
Date Deposited:	20 Dec 2022 12:00
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2023 23:10
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Nature Research
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-022-32063-z
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:194088

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Global patterns of vascular plant alpha diversity

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