Areas of higher socio‐economic status within cities often support greater biodiversity than poorer areas, representing a form of environmental injustice. This inequality may result in lower income areas experiencing both lower cultural (e.g., bird aesthetics) and regulating (e.g., pest control) ecosystem service provision. Urban areas are also hotspots for non‐native species, which can alter community functional structure and,...

Urbanization is one of the most intensive forms of landscape and habitat transformation, resulting in species loss, and taxonomic and functional homogenization of different communities. Whilst green infrastructure (the network of natural and semi-natural areas in cities) has been studied extensively in terms of specific features that promote biodiversity, there have been no studies that have assessed how species richness in di...

Aim Urban biodiversity, and its associated ecosystem services, is an important component of the quality of life of urban residents. The "luxury effect" posits a positive association between biodiversity and socioeconomic status in urban areas, and is thus reflective of environmental injustice, as the benefits associated with biodiversity are not equitably shared across society. We aimed to determine the generality of the luxur...

Aim To assess how species traits modulate the responses of carabids to elevational gradients, and how consistent these relationships are across different Alpine regions. Location Italian Alps. Taxon Coleoptera, Carabidae (ground beetles). Methods Carabid communities were sampled using pitfall traps along elevational gradients (697–2,840 m) in 416 study sites comprising a range of habitat types. The probability of carabid occur...

Interspecific interactions are crucial in determining species occurrence and community assembly. Understanding these interactions is thus essential for correctly predicting species' responses to climate change. We focussed on an avian forest guild of four hole‐nesting species with differing sensitivities to climate that show a range of well‐understood reciprocal interactions, including facilitation, competition and predation....

The Luxury Effect hypothesizes a positive relationship between wealth and biodiversity within urban areas. Understanding how urban development, both in terms of socio‐economic status and the built environment, affects biodiversity can contribute to the sustainable development of cities, and may be especially important in the developing world where current growth in urban populations is most rapid. We tested the Luxury Effect b...

Urbanization is one of the most extreme forms of environmental alteration, posing a major threat to biodiversity. We studied the effects of urbanization on avian communities via a systematic review using hierarchical and categorical meta‐analyses. Altogether, we found 42 observations from 37 case studies for species richness and 23 observations from 20 case studies for abundance. Urbanization had an overall strong negative eff...

Aim To assess the extent of the possible future conflict between skiing and biodiversity driven by climate change, human adaptation and species' distribution shifts. Location Italian Alps. Methods We assessed the extent of the possible future conflict between skiing and biodiversity by predicting locations likely to be suitable for both skiing and for high‐elevation birds in the Italian Alps by modelling ski‐piste and species...

Aims Biogeographical evidence suggests a strong link between climate and patterns of species diversity, and climate change is known to cause range shifts. However, there is little understanding of how shifts affect community composition and we lack empirical evidence of recent impacts of climate change on the diversity of vertebrates. Using a long‐term comprehensive dataset on bird abundance, we explore recent patterns of chan...