Changes in potential mammal diversity in national parks and their implications for conservation

Observed species richness (OSR) is a widely used and well-studied biodiversity metric. However, non-observed species in favorable ecosystems are also relevant. Two metrics that include observed and potential species were recently defined: potential biodiversity (hereafter potential species richness—PSR) and geometric mean of favorabilities (GMF). We used these metrics to evaluate the national park network of mainland Spain at two time periods (2002 and 2015), using terrestrial mammals on a UTM 100-km(2) grid. PSR and GMF are based on the favorability function, a species distribution model that assesses how favorable an area is for the presence of a species, over and above its prevalence in the study area. For each park and for the whole network, we calculated the mean and sum of OSR, PSR, and GMF in each time period, as well as changes between periods. OSR and PSR were higher inside than outside the park network in both time periods. Thus, although the network covers a very small proportion of the country, it performs well for the representation of mammal species and their favorable areas. However, mean PSR was lower in 2015 than in 2002 inside the national park network, whereas the opposite was the case outside the network. Mountainous Parks generally not only concentrated highly favorable areas for mammals, but they also showed less favorable areas in 2015 compared to 2002, although the reduction was moderate to low. This is a result to consider for future analyses because if the tendency increases, it may have consequences for the conservation of mammals and for the adequacy of the national park network.