Aim: Biogeography has a critical influence on how ecological communities respond to threats and how effective conservation interventions are designed. For example, the resilience of ecological communities is linked to environmental and climatic features, and the nature of threats impacting ecosystems also varies geographically. Understanding community–level threat responses may be most accurate at fine spatial scales, however collecting detailed ecological data at such a high resolution would be prohibitively resource intensive. In this study, we aim to find the spatial scale that could best capture variation in community–level threat responses whilst keeping data collection requirements feasible. Location: Global Terrestrial Time period: 1980 – Present Major Taxa studied: Terrestrial Plants & Animals Methods: Using a database of biodiversity records with extensive global coverage, we modelled species richness and total abundance (the responses) across land–use types (reflecting threats), considering three different spatial scales: biomes, biogeographical realms, and regional biomes (the interaction between realm and biome). We then modelled data from three highly sampled biomes separately to ask how responses to threat differ between regional biomes. Results: We found strong support for regional biomes in explaining variation in species richness and total abundance compared to biomes or realms alone. Responses to disturbed land–use types compared to primary vegetation were more pronounced and more distinct between regional biomes in the tropics compared to the temperate zone. Main conclusions: Our results suggest that regional biomes have potential as a reasonable spatial scale for understanding how ecological communities respond to threats and designing effective conservation interventions, but the lack of variation in response to land–use change between temperate regional biomes could mean that this framework would be more beneficial for refining the monitoring of tropical habitats.
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