Long-term monitoring of the spatio-temporal changes of the distribution of terrestrial sub-Antarctic biota

Long-term time series represent invaluable sources for improving our comprehension of the environmental factors driving the distribution of the terrestrial biota. In parallel, these data allow assessments of the effects of global change, in particular climatic changes and biological invasions, on plant and invertebrate diversity and community structure. To this aim, we have assembled a unique time series of non-native and native plant and invertebrate abundances from the French sub-Antarctic islands over multiple years and localities. Our long-term monitoring of the biota includes historical biodiversity data from the region, and are now continuously incremented with vegetation and invertebrate plot surveys. These approaches are conducted in different habitats of the sub-Antarctic islands so that the local composition of the biota (plant and invertebrates) can be compared over several years. Long-term monitoring data are finally used for assessing the consequences of redistribution for community and ecosystem functioning using functional diversity; this information can be further used for making predictions of the novel biotic interactions and functional properties of communities subjected to climate change.