Based on a distribution database brought together for the recently published Atlas of the European dragonflies and damselflies, we describe the patterns of diversity and endemism of these insect groups. Highest species richness, as well as richness of predominantly lentic species, occurs in central and western-central Europe. Strictly lotic species have their centre of diversity in southwest France and parts of the Iberian Peninsula. The highest number of endemic species is found in southwest France, the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkan Peninsula. A comparison of the diversity patterns of Odonata species listed in the EU Habitats Directive with those listed in the European Red List highlights a strong mismatch between species threatened in Europe, which are mainly found in the Mediterranean, and species legally protected by the European Union, which are concentrated in central and western Europe. This mismatch has a historical origin, as the species listed in the Habitats Directive were mostly selected in the 1970s and 1980s when water quality in western and central Europe was poor. Since the 1990s, water and habitat quality has improved in these parts of Europe while in the same period the pressure on aquatic habitats in the Mediterranean has increased greatly.Handling editor: Eric R. Larson Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-017-3495-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Aim: Poleward range shifts of species are among the most obvious effects of climate change on biodiversity. As a consequence of these range shifts, species communities are predicted to become increasingly composed of warm-dwelling species, but this has only been studied for a limited number of taxa, mainly birds, butterflies and plants. As species groups may vary considerably in their adaptation to climate change, it is desirable to expand these studies to other groups, from different ecosystems.Freshwater macroinvertebrates, such as dragonflies (Odonata), have been ranked among the species groups with highest priority. In this paper, we investigate how the | 937 TERMAAT ET Al. | 939TERMAAT ET Al.

The present-day geographic distribution of individual species of five taxonomic groups (plants, dragonflies, butterflies, herpetofauna and breeding birds) is relatively well-known on a small scale (5 Â 5 km squares) in Flanders (north Belgium). These data allow identification of areas with a high diversity within each of the species groups. However, differences in mapping intensity and coverage hamper straightforward comparisons of species-rich areas among the taxonomic groups. To overcome this problem, we modelled the species richness of each taxonomic group separately using various environmental characteristics as predictor variables (area of different land use types, biotope diversity, topographic and climatic features). We applied forward stepwise multiple regression to build the models, using a subset of well-surveyed squares. A separate set of equally well-surveyed squares was used to test the predictions of the models. The coincidence of geographic areas with high predicted species richness was remarkably high among the four faunal groups, but much lower between plants and each of the four faunal groups. Thus, the four investigated faunal groups can be used as relatively good indicator taxa for one another in Flanders, at least for their within-group species diversity. A mean predicted species diversity per mapping square was also estimated by averaging the standardised predicted species richness over the five taxonomic groups, to locate the regions that were predicted as being the most species-rich for all five investigated taxonomic groups together. Finally, the applicability of predictive modelling in nature conservation policy both in Flanders and in other regions is discussed.

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