Importance of natural land cover for plant species' conservation: A nationwide study in The Netherlands.

While shifts to high-intensity land cover have caused overwhelming biodiversity loss, it remains unclear how important natural land cover is to the occurrence, and thus the conservation, of different species groups. We used over 4 million plant species' observations to evaluate the conservation importance of natural land cover by its association with the occurrence probability of 1 122 native and 403 exotic plant species at 1 km resolution by species distribution models. We found that 74.9% of native species, 83.9% of the threatened species and 77.1% rare species preferred landscapes with over 50% natural land cover, while these landscapes only accounted for 15.6% of all grids. Most species preferred natural areas with a mixture of forest and open areas rather than areas with completely open or forested nature. Compared to native species, exotic species preferred areas with lower natural land cover and the cover of natural open area, but they both preferred extremely high and low cover of natural forest area. Threatened and rare species preferred higher natural land cover, either cover of natural forest area or cover of natural open area than not threatened and common species, but rare species were also more likely to occur in landscapes with 0-25% cover of natural open area. Although more natural land cover in a landscape will not automatically result in more native species, because there is often a non-linear increase in species occurrence probability when going from 0% to 100% natural land cover, for conserving purposes, over 80% natural land cover should be kept in landscapes for conserving threatened and very rare species, and 60% natural land cover is the best for conserving common native species. Our results stress the importance of natural areas for plant species' conservation. It also informs improvements to species conservation by increasing habitat diversity.

Correction to: Progress on bringing together raptor collections in Europe for contaminant research and monitoring in relation to chemicals regulation.

The correct affiliation of Sabrina Lo Brutto is shown in this paper.

Microsatellite Analysis of Museum Specimens Reveals Historical Differences in Genetic Diversity between Declining and More Stable Bombus Species.

Worldwide most pollinators, e.g. bumblebees, are undergoing global declines. Loss of genetic diversity can play an essential role in these observed declines. In this paper, we investigated the level of genetic diversity of seven declining Bombus species and four more stable species with the use of microsatellite loci. Hereto we genotyped a unique collection of museum specimens. Specimens were collected between 1918 and 1926, in 6 provinces of the Netherlands which allowed us to make interspecific comparisons of genetic diversity. For the stable species B. pascuorum, we also selected populations from two additional time periods: 1949-1955 and 1975-1990. The genetic diversity and population structure in B. pascuorum remained constant over the three time periods. However, populations of declining bumblebee species showed a significantly lower genetic diversity than co-occurring stable species before their major declines. This historical difference indicates that the repeatedly observed reduced genetic diversity in recent populations of declining bumblebee species is not caused solely by the decline itself. The historically low genetic diversity in the declined species may be due to the fact that these species were already rare, making them more vulnerable to the major drivers of bumblebee decline.