Authors: Kimberley, Adam; Hooftman, Danny;Bullock, James;Escribano-Avila, Gema;Honnay, Olivier;Krickl, Patricia;Lara-Romero, Carlos;Plue, Jan;Poschlod, Peter;Santamaria, Silvia;

Conservation policy aims to mitigate effects of habitat loss by creating networks of natural and semi-natural features (green infrastructure) which support threatened species and connect isolated habitats. Despite this, the extent to which different habitats provide connectivity for different species and how this influences biodiversity across scales and varying landscape contexts remains unclear. We investigated effects of landscape connectivity on plant community composition, genetic diversity and plant-pollinator interactions in a range of grasslands and grassland-type green infrastructure habitats in 36 landscapes in Belgium, Germany and Sweden. We found that the presence of green infrastructure supports various aspects of biodiversity, contributing to greater local-scale species richness and ecosystem functions and facilitating the transfer of species and genetic diversity between large, highly diverse populations in core grassland patches and surrounding habitats. However, different habitats support very different sets of species, the conservation value of which depends on environmental conditions and proximity to core grassland sites. This is particularly the case for poorly dispersed and specialised species, which do not benefit from spatial links between isolated or lower quality green infrastructure. Hence large, long-established grasslands are key for many species. As such, multiple requirements must be balanced when managing landscape-scale green infrastructure networks.