Aims Vegetation classification consistent with the Braun‐Blanquet approach is widely used in Europe for applied vegetation science, conservation planning and land management. During the long history of syntaxonomy, many concepts and names of vegetation units have been proposed, but there has been no single classification system integrating these units. Here we (1) present a comprehensive, hierarchical, syntaxonomic system of alliances, orders and classes of Braun‐Blanquet syntaxonomy for vascular plant, bryophyte and lichen, and algal communities of Europe; (2) briefly characterize in ecological and geographic terms accepted syntaxonomic concepts; (3) link available synonyms to these accepted concepts; and (4) provide a list of diagnostic species for all classes. Location European mainland, Greenland, Arctic archipelagos (including Iceland, Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya), Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores, Caucasus, Cyprus. Methods We evaluated approximately 10 000 bibliographic sources to create a comprehensive list of previously proposed syntaxonomic units. These units were evaluated by experts for their floristic and ecological distinctness, clarity of geographic distribution and compliance with the nomenclature code. Accepted units were compiled into three systems of classes, orders and alliances (EuroVegChecklist, EVC) for communities dominated by vascular plants (EVC1), bryophytes and lichens (EVC2) and algae (EVC3). Results EVC1 includes 109 classes, 300 orders and 1108 alliances; EVC2 includes 27 classes, 53 orders and 137 alliances, and EVC3 includes 13 classes, 24 orders and 53 alliances. In total 13 448 taxa were assigned as indicator species to classes of EVC1, 2087 to classes of EVC2 and 368 to classes of EVC3. Accepted syntaxonomic concepts are summarized in a series of appendices, and detailed information on each is accessible through the software tool EuroVegBrowser. Conclusions This paper features the first comprehensive and critical account of European syntaxa and synthesizes more than 100 yr of classification effort by European phytosociologists. It aims to document and stabilize the concepts and nomenclature of syntaxa for practical uses, such as calibration of habitat classification used by the European Union, standardization of terminology for environmental assessment, management and conservation of nature areas, landscape planning and education. The presented classification systems provide a baseline for future development and revision of European syntaxonomy.

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In as much as the elevation gradient in species composition is often thought to be driven by the corresponding temperature gradient, species ranges are both expected and predicted to shift upward in response to climate warming. Indeed, there are numerous reports of species moving towards higher elevations in response to the rising temperatures for both animals (Konvicka et al. 2003, Tryjanowski et al. 2005, Wilson et al. 2005, Franco et al. 2006, Hickling et al. 2006, Moritz et al. 2008, Raxworthy et al. 2008, Chen et al. 2009) and plants (Klanderud and Birks 2003, Walther et al. 2005, Pauli et al. 2007, Kelly and Goulden 2008, Lenoir et al. 2008, Parolo and Rossi 2008, Vittoz et al. 2008, Lenoir et al. 2009, and the evidence for significant upslope migrations now seems overwhelming regardless of the position along latitudinal (Klanderud and Birks 2003, Konvicka et al. 2003, Wilson et al. 2005, Raxworthy et al. 2008, Chen et al. 2009) or elevational (Walther et al. 2005, Pauli et al. 2007, Kelly and Goulden 2008, Lenoir et al. 2008, Vittoz et al. 2008, Lenoir et al. 2009) gradients. Due to this empirical evidence and, perhaps, the intuitive expectation of rising elevational ranges as a consequence of a warming climate, ecologists have primarily focused on elaborating on the mechanisms and consequences of such upslope shifts including (Colwell et al. 2008): 1) biotic attrition in the lowland tropics, 2) gaps between current and projected elevational ranges (range-shift gaps), and 3) mountaintop extinctions in the long-term. However, most of the studies that reported expected range shifts towards higher elevations have detected species moving towards lower elevations as well. Table 1 provides an illustrative, non-comprehensive survey of such studies from the recent years: in summary they demonstrate that ca 65% of the species have shifted their mid-range positions upslope, 10% have not changed their mid-range positions, and 25% have shifted their mid-range positions downslope (Table 1). In addition, according to a global review of the literature published until the beginning of the 21st century (Parmesan and Yohe 2003) ca 20% of the species have adjusted their ranges towards lower elevations and/or southern latitudes. Hence, a considerable fraction of the investigated species has shown range shifts that are inconsistent with the forecasted effects of climate warming. These downslope movements seem very unlikely to occur as a direct consequence of rising temperatures, but the potential mechanisms involved have received little attention.Stochastic fluctuations in the positions of individuals, or populations, together with measurement errors, represent one such potential ''mechanism''. However, many, though not all of the studies reporting downslope shifts have explicitly tested the observed changes in single species' ranges for significant deviation from random fluctuations. For plants, significant downslope shifts have been reported for 5 of 46 species displaying significant mid-range shifts between the periods 19...

Many studies report that mountain plant species are shifting upward in elevation. However, the majority of these reports focus on shifts of upper limits. Here, we expand the focus and simultaneously analyze changes of both range limits, optima, and abundances of 183 mountain plant species. We therefore resurveyed 1,576 vegetation plots first recorded before 1970 in the European Alps. We found that both range limits and optima shifted upward in elevation, but the most pronounced trend was a mean increase in species abundance. Despite huge species-specific variation, range dynamics showed a consistent trend along the elevational gradient: Both range limits and optima shifted upslope faster the lower they were situated historically, and species' abundance increased more for species from lower elevations. Traits affecting the species' dispersal and persistence capacity were not related to their range dynamics. Using indicator values to stratify species by their thermal and nutrient demands revealed that elevational ranges of thermophilic species tended to expand, while those of cold-adapted species tended to contract. Abundance increases were strongest for nutriphilous species. These results suggest that recent climate warming interacted with airborne nitrogen deposition in driving the observed dynamics. So far, the majority of species appear as "winners" of recent changes, yet "losers" are overrepresented among high-elevation, cold-adapted species with low nutrient demands. In the decades to come, high-alpine species may hence face the double pressure of climatic changes and novel, superior competitors that move up faster than they themselves can escape to even higher elevations.

The European Vegetation Archive (EVA) is a centralized database of European vegetation plots developed by the IAVS Working Group European Vegetation Survey. It has been in development since 2012 and first made available for use in research projects in 2014. It stores copies of national and regional vegetationplot databases on a single software platform. Data storage in EVA does not affect on-going independent development of the contributing databases, which remain the property of the data contributors. EVA uses a prototype of the database management software TURBOVEG 3 developed for joint management of multiple databases that use different species lists. This is facilitated by the SynBioSys Taxon Database, a system of taxon names and concepts used in the individual European databases and their corresponding names on a unified list of European flora. TURBOVEG 3 also includes procedures for handling data requests, selections and provisions according to the approved EVA Data Property and Governance Rules. By 30 June 2015, 61 databases from all European regions have joined EVA, contributing in total 1 027 376 vegetation plots, 82% of them with geographic coordinates, from 57 countries. EVA provides a unique data source for largescale analyses of European vegetation diversity both for fundamental research and nature conservation applications. Updated information on EVA is available online at http://euroveg.org/evadatabase.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Lysenko 91,92 | Armin Macanović 93 | Parastoo Mahdavi 94 | Peter Manning 35 | Corrado Marcenò 13 | Vassiliy Martynenko 95 | Maurizio Mencuccini 96 | Vanessa Minden 97 | Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund 54 | Marco Moretti 98 | Jonas V. Müller 99 | Abstract Aims: Vegetation-plot records provide information on the presence and cover or abundance of plants co-occurring in the same community. Vegetation-plot data are spread across research groups, environmental agencies and biodiversity research centers and, thus, are rarely accessible at continental or global scales. Here we present the sPlot database, which collates vegetation plots worldwide to allow for the exploration of global patterns in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity at the plant community level.Results: sPlot version 2.1 contains records from 1,121,244 vegetation plots, which comprise 23,586,216 records of plant species and their relative cover or abundance in plots collected worldwide between 1885 and 2015. We complemented the information for each plot by retrieving climate and soil conditions and the biogeographic context (e.g., biomes) from external sources, and by calculating community-weighted means and variances of traits using gap-filled data from the global plant trait database TRY. Moreover, we created a phylogenetic tree for 50,167 out of the 54,519 species identified in the plots. We present the first maps of global patterns of community richness and community-weighted means of key traits. Conclusions: The availability of vegetation plot data in sPlot offers new avenues for vegetation analysis at the global scale. K E Y W O R D S biodiversity, community ecology, ecoinformatics, functional diversity, global scale, macroecology, phylogenetic diversity, plot database, sPlot, taxonomic diversity, vascular plant, vegetation relevé 166 |

The frequency of range sizes shows a U-shaped distribution, with 42 species occurring in < 10 regions. The highest number of beech forest species is found in the southern Alps and adjacent regions, and species numbers decrease with increasing distance from these regions. With only narrow-range species taken into consideration, secondary maxima are found in Spain, the southern Apennines, the Carpathians, and Greece. Distance to the nearest potential refuge area is the strongest predictor of beech forest species richness, while altitudinal range and soil type diversity had little or no predictive value. The clusters of narrow-range species are in good concordance with the glacial refuge areas of beech and other temperate tree species as estimated in recent studies. These findings support the hypothesis that the distribution of many beech forest species is limited by post-glacial dispersal rather than by their environmental requirements