Five Decades of Citizen Science Reveal Erosion of Hotspots of Multifaceted Plant Diversity
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Botany State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart Germany
- 2Institute of Landscape and Plant Ecology University of Hohenheim Stuttgart Germany
- 3KomBioTa—Center for Biodiversity and Integrative Taxonomy University of Hohenheim & State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart Germany
- 4Plant Ecology University of Tübingen Tübingen Germany
Abstract
Biodiversity includes taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity but the changes in these facets at regional scales remain unclear and often context dependent. Using 2.5 million citizen science observations of 1957 vascular plant species across 53 years in SW‐Germany, we assessed changes in seven biodiversity metrics. Rather than a general decline, we found different facets exhibited different trends in both direction and magnitude of change. Phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity change were mostly negatively correlated, and change in functional diversity was independent from the others. We identified the role of climate and human activity influencing the change in taxonomic and functional diversity, while phylogenetic diversity was also affected by geodiversity. Crucially, we detected consistent erosion of biodiversity hotspots across all facets, while areas with low initial diversity tended to gain species. These findings highlight the need to consider multiple biodiversity facets and local context dependency to better understand biodiversity change at regional scales.
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BibTeX
@article{ferenc2026five,
title = {{Five Decades of Citizen Science Reveal Erosion of Hotspots of Multifaceted Plant Diversity}},
author = {Viktoria Ferenc and Cornelia Krause and Jörn Pagel and Michael Boxriker and Monika Voggesberger and Arno Wörz and Mike Thiv and Pierre Liancourt},
journal = {Global Change Biology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1111/gcb.71150},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.71150},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Five Decades of Citizen Science Reveal Erosion of Hotspots of Multifaceted Plant Diversity
AU - Viktoria Ferenc
AU - Cornelia Krause
AU - Jörn Pagel
AU - Michael Boxriker
AU - Monika Voggesberger
AU - Arno Wörz
AU - Mike Thiv
AU - Pierre Liancourt
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
JO - Global Change Biology
DO - 10.1111/gcb.71150
UR - https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.71150
AB - Biodiversity includes taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity but the changes in these facets at regional scales remain unclear and often context dependent. Using 2.5 million citizen science observations of 1957 vascular plant species across 53 years in SW‐Germany, we assessed changes in seven biodiversity metrics. Rather than a general decline, we found different facets exhibited different trends in both direction and magnitude of change. Phylogenetic and taxonomic diversity change were mostly negatively correlated, and change in functional diversity was independent from the others. We identified the role of climate and human activity influencing the change in taxonomic and functional diversity, while phylogenetic diversity was also affected by geodiversity. Crucially, we detected consistent erosion of biodiversity hotspots across all facets, while areas with low initial diversity tended to gain species. These findings highlight the need to consider multiple biodiversity facets and local context dependency to better understand biodiversity change at regional scales.
SN - 1354-1013
SN - 1365-2486
ER -