Abstract Present biodiversity comprises the evolutionary heritage of Earth's epochs. Lineages from particular epochs are often found in particular habitats, but whether current habitat decline threatens the heritage from particular epochs is unknown. We hypothesized that within a given region, humans threaten specifically habitats that harbor lineages from a particular geological epoch. We expect so because humans threaten environments that dominated and lineages that diversified during these epochs. We devised a new approach to quantify, per habitat type, diversification of lineages from different epochs. For Netherlands, one of the floristically and ecologically best‐studied regions, we quantified the decline of habitat types and species in the past century. We defined habitat types based on vegetation classification and used existing ranking of decline of vegetation classes and species. Currently, most declining habitat types and the group of red‐listed species are characterized by increased diversification of lineages dating back to Paleogene, specifically to Paleocene‐Eocene and Oligocene. Among vulnerable habitat types with large representation of lineages from these epochs were sublittoral and eulittoral zones of temperate seas and 2 types of nutrient‐poor, open habitats. These losses of evolutionary heritage would go unnoticed with classical measures of evolutionary diversity. Loss of heritage from Paleocene‐Eocene became unrelated to decline once low competition, shade tolerance, and low proportion of non‐Apiaceae were accounted for, suggesting that these variables explain the loss of heritage from Paleocene‐Eocene. Losses of heritage from Oligocene were partly explained by decline of habitat types occupied by weak competitors and shade‐tolerant species. Our results suggest a so‐far unappreciated human threat to evolutionary heritage: habitat decline threatens descendants from particular epochs. If the trends persist into the future uncontrolled, there may be no habitats within the region for many descendants of evolutionary ancient epochs, such as Paleogene.

中文翻译：

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通过竞争激烈的环境增加对荷兰被子植物进化遗产的人为威胁

摘要 当前的生物多样性包括地球各个时代的进化遗产。来自特定时期的谱系经常出现在特定的栖息地中，但目前的栖息地衰退是否威胁到特定时期的遗产尚不清楚。我们假设在给定区域内，人类威胁到特定的栖息地，这些栖息地包含来自特定地质时代的谱系。我们期望如此，因为人类威胁着在这些时代占据主导地位的环境和多样化的谱系。我们设计了一种新方法来量化每个栖息地类型不同时期的谱系多样化。对于植物区系和生态学研究最好的地区之一荷兰，我们量化了过去一个世纪栖息地类型和物种的减少。我们根据植被分类定义栖息地类型，并使用现有的植被类别和物种下降排名。目前，大多数下降的栖息地类型和列入红色名录的物种组的特征是可追溯到古近纪的谱系多样化增加，特别是古新世-始新世和渐新世。在这些时代具有大量谱系代表性的脆弱栖息地类型中，有温带海洋的亚滨海和绝海带以及两种营养贫乏的开放栖息地。这些进化遗产的损失在进化多样性的经典测量中不会被注意到。一旦考虑到低竞争、耐荫性和非伞形科的低比例，古新世-始新世遗产的丧失就与衰退无关，表明这些变量解释了古新世-始新世遗产的丧失。渐新世遗产的丧失部分是由于弱竞争者和耐阴物种占据的栖息地类型减少。我们的研究结果表明，人类对进化遗产的一种迄今为止未被重视的威胁：栖息地的衰退威胁着特定时代的后代。如果这种趋势不受控制地持续到未来，那么该地区可能就没有许多进化古代时代的后代（例如古近纪）的栖息地。