RESEARCH ARTICLE Present and historical landscape structure shapes current species richness in Central European grasslands Pascal Scherreiks . Martin M. Gossner . Didem Ambarlı . Manfred Ayasse . Nico Blu¨ thgen . Markus Fischer . Valentin H. Klaus . Till Kleinebecker . Felix Neff . Daniel Prati . Sebastian Seibold . Nadja K. Simons . Wolfgang W. Weisser . Konstans Wells . Catrin Westphal . Jan Thiele Received: 17 May 2021 / Accepted: 24 December 2021 Ó The Author(s) 2022 Abstract Context Current diversity and species composition of ecological communities can often not exclusively be explained by present land use and landscape structure. Historical land use may have considerably influenced ecosystems and their properties for decades and centuries. Objectives We analysed the effects of present and historical landscape structure on plant and arthropod species richness in temperate grasslands, using data from comprehensive plant and arthropod assessments across three regions in Germany and maps of current and historical land cover from three time periods between 1820 and 2016. Methods We calculated local, grassland class and landscape scale metrics for 150 grassland plots. Class and landscape scale metrics were calculated in buffer zones of 100 to 2000 m around the plots. We considered effects on total species richness as well as on the richness of species subsets determined by taxonomy and functional traits related to habitat use, dispersal and feeding. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10980-021-01392-7. P. Scherreiks (&)  J. Thiele Thu¨nen Institute of Biodiversity, Bundesallee 65, 38116 Brunswick, Germany e-mail: pascal.scherreiks@thuenen.de P. Scherreiks Department of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, Technical University of Brunswick, Katharinenstraßer 3, 38106 Brunswick, Germany M. M. Gossner  F. Neff Forest Entomology, WSL Swiss Federal Research Institute, Zu¨rcherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland M. M. Gossner Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland D. Ambarlı  W. W. Weisser Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, Department of Ecology and Ecosystem Management, Technical University of Munich, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany D. Ambarlı Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Agriculture, Du¨zce University, 81620 Du¨zce, Turkey M. Ayasse Institute of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 1, 89075 Ulm, Germany N. Blu¨thgen  N. K. Simons Ecological Networks, Technische Universita¨t Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 3, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany 123 Landsc Ecol https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-021-01392-7