ORIGINAL PAPER Linking beta diversity patterns to protected areas: lessons from the Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest R. S. Bergamin 1,2 • V. A. G. Bastazini 3 • E. Ve ´lez-Martin 3 • V. Debastiani 3 • K. J. Zanini 1 • R. Loyola 2 • S. C. Mu ¨ ller 1 Received: 25 August 2016 / Revised: 30 January 2017 / Accepted: 3 February 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract Understanding the processes that drive patterns of beta diversity is crucial for planning conservation policies and for designing networks of protected area (PAs). Beta diversity can be decomposed into two components: 1—species turnover, the replacement of species by others resulting in a low proportion of shared species; 2—species nested- ness—the result of differences in species richness, when a poorer community is a subset of species from a richer community. We aimed to evaluate beta diversity patterns and how they are represented in the network of PAs in southern Brazilian, regarding three forest types: Atlantic Forest s.s., Araucaria Forest, and Seasonal Forest. Beta diversity was partitioned into the turnover and nestedness components. Additionally, we examined spatial patterns of site similarity using distance decay curves. Beta diversity was mainly caused by species turnover (approx. 86%), with only a small contribution of nestedness (approx. 5%) in all three forests types. The patterns of distance decay curves revealed that even at small distances (50–100 km), we found a considerable decrease in similarities, reinforcing turnover patterns. As turnover brought the larger contribution to beta diversity, additional conservation efforts must target an increase in the number of PAs, that should be Communicated by Jefferson Prado. This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Forest and plantation biodiversity. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10531-017-1315-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & R. S. Bergamin rodrigo.bergamin80@gmail.com 1 Plant Ecology Lab, Graduate Program in Ecology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil 2 Conservation Biogeography Lab, Department of Ecology, Universidade Federal de Goia ´s, Goia ´s, Brazil 3 Quantitative Ecology Lab, Graduate Program in Ecology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil 123 Biodivers Conserv DOI 10.1007/s10531-017-1315-y