Gradual changes in range size accompany long‐term trends in species richness

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Abstract

Species richness has long been used as an indicator of ecosystem functioning and health. Global richness is declining, but it is unclear whether sub-global trends differ. Regional trends are especially understudied, with most focused on island regions where richness is strongly impacted by novel colonisations. We addressed this knowledge gap by testing for multi-decade trends in species richness in nine open marine regions around North America (197 region-years) while accounting for imperfect observations and grounding our findings in species-level range dynamics. We found positive richness trends in eight of nine regions, four of which were statistically significant. Species' range sizes generally contracted pre-extinction and expanded post-colonisation, but the ranges of transient species expanded over the long-term, slowly increasing their regional retention and driving increasing richness. These results provide more evidence that sub-global richness trends are stable or increasing, and highlight the utility of range size for understanding richness dynamics.

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