Open Access

Francesca Pilotto, Ingolf Kühn, Rita Adrian, Renate Alber, Audrey Alignier, Christopher Andrews, Jaana Bäck, Luc Barbaro, Deborah Beaumont, Natalie Beenaerts, Sue Benham, David S. Boukal, Vincent Bretagnolle, Elisa Camatti, Roberto Canullo, Patricia G. Cardoso, Bruno J. Ens, Gert Everaert, Vesela Evtimova, Heidrun Feuchtmayr, Ricardo Garcia-Gonzalez, Daniel Gomez Garcia, Ulf Grandin, Jerzy M. Gutowski, Liat Hadar, Lubos Halada, Melinda Halassy, Herman Hummel, Kaisa-Leena Huttunen, Bogdan Jaroszewicz, Thomas C. Jensen, Henrik Kalivoda, Inger Kappel Schmidt, Ingrid Kröncke, Reima Leinonen, Filipe Martinho, Henning Meesenburg, Julia Meyer, Stefano Minerbi, Don Monteith, Boris P. Nikolov, Daniel Oro, Davis Ozolins, Bachisio M. Padedda, Denise Pallett, Marco Pansera, Miguel Angelo Pardal, Bruno Petriccione, Tanja Pipan, Juha Pöyry, Stefanie M. Schäfer, Marcus Schaub, Susanne C. Schneider, Agnija Skuja, Karline Soetaert, Gunta Springe, Radoslav Stanchev, Jenni A. Stockan, Stefan Stoll, Lisa Sundqvist, Anne Thimonier, Gert Van Hoey, Gunther Van Ryckegem, Marcel E. Visser, Samuel Vorhauser, Peter Haase

• Local biodiversity trends over time are likely to be decoupled from global trends, as local processes may compensate or counteract global change. We analyze 161 long-term biological time series (15–91 years) collected across Europe, using a comprehensive dataset comprising ~6,200 marine, freshwater and terrestrial taxa. We test whether (i) local long-term biodiversity trends are consistent among biogeoregions, realms and taxonomic groups, and (ii) changes in biodiversity correlate with regional climate and local conditions. Our results reveal that local trends of abundance, richness and diversity differ among biogeoregions, realms and taxonomic groups, demonstrating that biodiversity changes at local scale are often complex and cannot be easily generalized. However, we find increases in richness and abundance with increasing temperature and naturalness as well as a clear spatial pattern in changes in community composition (i.e. temporal taxonomic turnover) in most biogeoregions of Northern and Eastern Europe.