By integrating species distribution modeling techniques, phylogenetic comparative methods, and climatic data, we analyzed how European falcon climatic niches have changed over evolutionary time in order to understand their tempo and mode of evolution and gain phylogenetic insights related to the ecological context of falcon evolution. For this purpose, we tested the relative contributions of niche conservatism, convergent evolution, and divergent evolution in the evolutionary history of this group of species in Europe. The occupation of climatic niche spaces by falcon species in Europe was not similar, considering that their climatic niche evolution was characterized by heterotachy, especially after ca. 4 Mya. Our results indicate that convergent evolution and niche divergence played an important role in the evolutionary history of these species, with no significant evidence of closely related species retaining their fundamental niche over time (phylogenetic niche conservatism). In most analyses, less closely related falcon species occupied similar climatic environments. We found that speciation in the European genus Falco was influenced by climatic niche differentiation, more prevalent in the last 4 million years, with the main climatic niche shifts occurring between closely related falcon species.

Considering that land use and land cover (LULC) change is one of the most important challenges to biodiversity today, we used Copernicus products to analyze LULC changes at the level of the “Nordul Gorjului de Vest” Natura 2000 site (Romania) from 1990 to 2018. The interpretation of the impact of these changes on areas with very high potential for three regulating ecosystem services (ESs) (local climate regulation, regulation of waste, and water purification) was performed. Forest habitats are the major LULC class category in the “Nordul Gorjului de Vest” Natura 2000 site, with broad-leaved forest as the dominant forest class. In terms of areas lost or gained by the different LULC classes for each analyzed time interval, most transformations took place in the period 2000–2006, changes which were also reflected in the overall study period (1990–2018). During this time frame, the conversion of transitional forest shrubs into broad-leaved forest, which is the second largest transition in terms of absolute area changed, led, in terms of contribution rates, to an increase in the areas with very high potential for two of the three analyzed ESs. The conversion of transitional woodland shrub into broad-leaved forest was conductive only to synergy for all the pairwise interactions between the three ESs.