Fig. 1

Three scenarios of floristic variation that give qualitatively similar results in terms of thermophilization—an increase of all three quantiles 5, 50 and 95 % of the floristic temperature distributions—as those observed by De Frenne et al. (2013) in Europe yet correspond to three different ecological interpretations: (from top to bottom) (i) an increase in warmth-adapted species and a decrease in cold-adapted species, (ii) a decrease in cold-adapted species and an increase in generalist species and (iii) an increase in warmth-adapted species and a decrease in generalist species. Left: thermophilization indices—i.e. differences with original situations—for temperature quantiles 5, 50 (median) and 95 %. Right: abundance—actually here, proportional to the number of species—in the four ecological groups simulated (temperature generalist in green with diamond symbol, cold-adapted in blue with square symbol, intermediate temperatures adapted in brown with circle symbol and warm-adapted species in red with triangle symbol), in the past (thin plain curves) and now (thick dashed curves)