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There are many available ways to rank species for conservation prioritization. Here the authors identify species of mammals and birds that are both spatially restricted and functionally distinct, finding that such species are currently insufficiently protected and disproportionately sensitive to current and future threats.

The relationships between ecosystem productivity and plant diversity are complex. Here, the authors show that sites with high productivity typically have reduced species diversity but high functional and phylogenetic diversity, potentially owing to the creation of additional niche space.

In this study, the authors show that the placement of protected areas is globally highly heterogenous but can be accurately predicted from a reduced set of socioeconomic and environmental factors. These predictions highlight that most unprotected areas critical for the conservation of vertebrates are located in unfavourable conditions to establish future protected areas.

Species response to environmental change can have an impact on community assemblages and ecosystem functioning. Here, the authors assess the combined impact of regional land use and climate change on bird functional diversity and find that global changes may lead to uniform species assemblages across Europe.

The evidence for rapid climate change now seems overwhelming. Global temperatures are predicted to rise by up to 4 °C by 2100, with associated alterations in precipitation patterns. Assessing the consequences for biodiversity, and how they might be mitigated, is a Grand Challenge in ecology.

Terrestrial animals can be classified into distinct biogeographic regions, but less is known about what shapes these global boundaries. Here, the authors identify geological and climatic factors that determine the separation of realms through time.

The high-resolution global model of soil temperature and snow cover change in mountain ecosystems developed here shows that areas nearby glaciers are warming faster than other mountain regions, and these effects are particularly rapid in tropical mountains.

Trees are likely to show lagged responses to climate change because they are sessile and long-lived. Here, the authors show that dominant tree species in North America are out of equilibrium with climate, with range contraction outpacing expansion.

Attaining global biodiversity projections requires the use of various species distribution and climate modelling and scenario approaches. Here the authors report that model choice can significantly impact results, with particularly uncertainty arising from choice of species distribution model and emission scenario.

Pl@ntBERT is a language-based AI model that learned the ‘syntax’ of plant assemblages, predicting likely species and inferring habitats by modelling biotic relationships.

Simulations of species range shifts for flora of the European Alps under varying climate and land-use models to 2080 provide the basis for spatial conservation planning to preserve taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity.

Here, the authors use full-plastome phylogenomics and multiclade comparative models to reconstruct the tempo and drivers of six European Alpine angiosperm lineages before and during the Pleistocene. They find that geographic divergence and bedrock shifts drive speciation events, while diversification rates remained steady.

A species-level phylogenetic analysis of the high-elevation flora of the European Alps reveals that the flora is young and colonist rich. Its assembly was primarily driven by the Pleistocene climatic cycles, rather than ancient orogenic events.

Over half the world’s rivers dry periodically, yet little is known about the biological communities in dry riverbeds. This study examines biodiversity across 84 non-perennial rivers in 19 countries using DNA metabarcoding. It finds that nutrient availability, climate and biotic interactions influence the biodiversity of these dry environments.

Using information on current species distributions and dispersal traits, this study forecasts climate-driven range dynamics of plant species across the European Alps. Simulations predict moderate range contractions over the twenty-first century; however, more severe effects of climate warming on mountain plant diversity are expected in the longer term.

The mechanisms shaping plant succession are dynamic. Compositional dissimilarity between communities decreases over time, underlined by a predominance of taxa addition in early communities, with replacement becoming more important after 50 yr.

Across 46 proglacial landscapes worldwide, environmental properties and biodiversity have shown complex patterns of change since glaciers retreated.

At a time when protecting the environment is urgent, dealing with inherent uncertainties in the responses of biodiversity to disturbances is essential. This study promotes a promising tool to assess the vulnerability of species assemblages to guide protection efforts even if species response and disturbance regimes are poorly documented.

Using 32 ecological networks (host–parasite, plant–pollinator, plant–herbivore and other food webs), the authors show that several network properties scale with the size of the sampling area, suggesting a new type of biodiversity–area relationship.

By analysing the evolutionary relationships of angiosperm species in 63 alpine floras worldwide, the authors find that each of the alpine floras represents an assemblage of more closely related species compared with their respective regional floras.

Phylogenetic turnover measures the evolutionary distance between species assemblages. Here, Saladin et al. analyze the phylogenetic turnover of European tetrapods after controlling for geographic distance and show greater roles of environment in recent evolutionary history for ectotherms than for endotherms.

Environmental niche models are often used to predict species responses to climate change but they neglect the potential for evolutionary responses. Here, Cottoet al. develop a model incorporating demographic processes and evolutionary dynamics and show that perennial alpine plants persist in unsuitable habitats but produce maladapted offspring.

Both host diet and phylogeny have been argued to shape mammalian microbiome communities. Here, the authors show that diet predicts the presence of ancient bacterial lineages in the microbiome, but that co-speciation between more recent bacterial lineages and their hosts may drive associations between microbiome composition and phylogeny.

Here, the authors use sedimentary DNA, pollen, fungal spores, chironomids, and microcharcoal from an alpine lake core to reconstruct vegetation across 12,000 years. They find that vegetation responded to climate in the early Holocene, followed by a shift to human activity from 6000 years onward corresponding with an increase in deforestation and agropastoralism.

Climate and land-cover change can affect the summer and winter ranges and migration distances of migratory birds. Accounting for all of these factors, rather than just summer range as is typical, significantly increases the number of species under threat.

Expanding protected areas for ecological conservation by just 5% has the potential to markedly increase terrestrial biodiversity protection.