Aim Land‐use change drives biodiversity loss, but some species are more vulnerable than others. Indicators of global biodiversity must attempt to summarise these impacts representatively and meaningfully, to guide biodiversity recovery. Yet species that are hard to detect, and thus feature less in relevant databases, might possess traits that make them particularly sensitive to anthropogenic impacts. Using global data for plan...

Insect biodiversity is changing rapidly, driven by a suite of pressures, notably land use, land‐use intensification and increasingly climate change. We lack large‐scale evidence on how land use and climate change interact to drive insect biodiversity changes. We assess bumble bee responses to interactive effects of land use and climate pressures across North America and Europe. The probability of occurrence increases in landsc...

Protected areas are typically considered a cornerstone of conservation programs and play a fundamental role in protecting natural areas and biodiversity. Human‐driven land‐use and land‐cover (LULC) changes lead to habitat loss and biodiversity loss inside protected areas, impairing their effectiveness. However, the global dynamics of habitat quality and habitat degradation in protected areas remain unclear. We used the Integra...

The negative impact of agricultural land on biodiversity is widely recognized. However, there remains a knowledge gap regarding the role of different crop types in maintaining biodiversity within the agricultural landscape. By extracting biodiversity data from global datasets and classifying different crop types, we quantified the contribution of different crop types to biodiversity. Our results indicate that biodiversity leve...

Land‐use and climate change are major pressures on terrestrial biodiversity. Species’ extinction risk and responses to human pressures relate to ecological traits and other characteristics in some clades. However, large‐scale comparative assessments of the associations between traits and responses to multiple human pressures across multiple clades are needed. We investigated whether a set of ecological characteristics that are...

The seasonal coupling of plant and soil microbial nutrient demands is crucial for efficient ecosystem nutrient cycling and plant production, especially in strongly seasonal alpine ecosystems. Yet, how these seasonal nutrient cycling processes are modified by climate change and what the consequences are for nutrient loss and retention in alpine ecosystems remain unclear. Here, we explored how two pervasive climate change factor...

As global average surface temperature increases, extreme climatic events such as heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, which can drive biodiversity responses such as rapid population declines and/or shifts in species distributions and even local extirpations. However, the impacts of extreme climatic events are largely ignored in conservation plans. Birds are known to be susceptible to heatwaves, especially in dryla...

Human‐induced environmental changes have a direct impact on species populations, with some species experiencing declines while others display population growth. Understanding why and how species populations respond differently to environmental changes is fundamental to mitigate and predict future biodiversity changes. Theoretically, species life‐history strategies are key determinants shaping the response of populations to env...

As agricultural land use and climate change continue to pose increasing threats to biodiversity in sub‐Saharan Africa, efforts are being made to identify areas where trade‐offs between future agricultural development and terrestrial biodiversity conservation are expected to be greatest. However, little research so far has focused on freshwater biodiversity conservation in the context of agricultural development in sub‐Saharan...

Aim Agriculture is one of the greatest pressures on biodiversity. Regional studies have shown that the presence of natural habitat and landscape heterogeneity are beneficial for biodiversity in agriculture, but it remains unclear whether their importance varies geographically. Here, we use local biodiversity data to determine which local and landscape variables are most associated with biodiversity patterns and whether their a...

Rapid human‐driven environmental changes are impacting animal populations around the world. Currently, land‐use and climate change are two of the biggest pressures facing biodiversity. However, studies investigating the impacts of these pressures on population trends often do not consider potential interactions between climate and land‐use change. Further, a population's climatic position (how close the ambient temperature and...

Land‐use change is the leading driver of global biodiversity loss thus characterising its impacts on the functional structure of ecological communities is an urgent challenge. Using a database describing vertebrate assemblages in different land uses, we assess how the type and intensity of land use affect the functional diversity of vertebrates globally. We find that human land uses alter local functional structure by driving...

Climate change is disproportionately impacting mountain ecosystems, leading to large reductions in winter snow cover, earlier spring snowmelt and widespread shrub expansion into alpine grasslands. Yet, the combined effects of shrub expansion and changing snow conditions on abiotic and biotic soil properties remains poorly understood. We used complementary field experiments to show that reduced snow cover and earlier snowmelt h...

Aim Trait data are increasingly being used in studies investigating the impacts of global changes on the structure and functioning of ecological communities. Despite a growing number of trait data collations for terrestrial vertebrates, there is to date no global assessment of the gaps and biases the data present. Here, we assess whether terrestrial vertebrate trait data are taxonomically, spatially and phylogenetically biased...

Anthropogenic land‐use change causes substantial changes in local and global biodiversity. Rare and common species can differ in sensitivity to land‐use change; rare species are expected to be affected more negatively. Rarity may be defined in terms of geographic range size, population density, or breadth of habitat requirements. How these 3 forms of rarity interact in determining global responses to land use is yet to be asse...

Biodiversity models make an important contribution to our understanding of global biodiversity changes. The effects of different land uses vary across ecosystem types, yet most broad-scale models have failed to account for this variation. The effects of land use may be different in systems characterized by low water availability because of the unusual conditions within these systems. Drylands are expanding, currently occupying...

Most current research on land‐use intensification addresses its potential to either threaten biodiversity or to boost agricultural production. However, little is known about the simultaneous effects of intensification on biodiversity and yield. To determine the responses of species richness and yield to conventional intensification, we conducted a global meta‐analysis synthesizing 115 studies which collected data for both vari...

Aim Habitat loss continues to cause loss of biodiversity. To quantify the effects of land‐use change on the diversity and composition of ecological communities – in terms of functional groups – we make modelled estimates of the impact of past and future (to 2050) land‐use change on the overall diversity and dietary guild structure of tropical forest bird communities. Location Tropical and subtropical forests (40° S to 40° N )....

Aim Human impacts on the biosphere are a matter of urgent and growing concern, with ecologists increasingly being asked to project biodiversity futures. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ( IPBES ) is likely to comprehensively assess such projections, yet despite being widely used and potentially critical tools for analysing socio‐environmental futures, integrated assessment models ( IAM s) h...

Summary Since industrialization global CO 2 emissions have increased, and as a consequence oceanic pH is predicted to drop by 0.3–0.4 units before the end of the century – a process coined ‘ocean acidification’. Consequently, there is significant interest in how pH changes will affect the ocean's biota and integral processes. We investigated marine picoplankton (0.2–2 µm diameter) community response to predicted end of century...