Table 2.

Hypotheses established to test the association between country’s characteristics (x) and the biodiversity indicator choice (y) and their rationales

Nr	Hypotheses	Rationale
1	The country´s total land area correlates with the total number of biodiversity indicators in the national monitoring systems	Species–area relationship: Rosenzweig (1995) Niche differentiation: Connell (1980)
2	The country´s total land area correlates with endemic species as biodiversity indicators	Endemics-area relationship: Storch et al. (2012) Minimum viable population size: Shaffer (1981)
3	The country´s total coastline correlates with the number of aquatic species indicators	About 80% of marine species diversity occurs in the coastal zones: Ray (1991) In oceans, microbial diversity of coastal waters is about a magnitude higher than in open water: Glöckner et al. (2012)
4	The geographical isolation of a country correlates with endemic species as biodiversity indicators	Island biogeography: McArthur and Wilson (1967)
5	The mean latitude of a country correlates with the number of species indicators	Latitudinal diversity gradient: MacArthur (1972)
6	The number of Biogeographical Regions in a country correlates with the number of species indicators	Niche differentiation: Connell (1980) Biogeographical processes influence local species composition: Ricklefs (1987), Wiens and Donoghue (2004)
7	The country´s forest cover correlates with forest structural indicators and indicators of terrestrial flora diversity	Structural diversity is a very important group of indicators to assess forest biodiversity: McElhinny et al. (2005), Dieler (2013) Forests provide habitat for 80% of all terrestrial species: FAO (2010)
8	The country´s agricultural area correlates with the number of genetic indicators of domesticated plants and animals	Domestication is another important facet of biodiversity. Of 5000 vertebrate species described, 30–40 birds and mammals were domesticated: Dirzo and Raven (2003) About 30% of 500 families of flowering plants contain at least one crop species: Hammond (1995)
9	The country´s population density correlates with the number of indicators related to human pressure	Biodiversity loss is driven by human socioeconomic pressures: Naidoo and Adamowicz (2001) Biodiversity changes can be predicted by human development pressures: Waldron et al. (2017)
10	The country´s GDP (gross domestic product) correlates with genetic indicators as well as with the total number of biodiversity indicators	The GDP correlates significantly positively with number of published scientific conservation and ecological articles and research expenditure: Doi and Takahara (2016)
11	The country´s GDP correlates with endemic species as biodiversity indicators	Strong, positive correlation between number country-endemic freshwater species and GDP can be found globally: Collen et al. (2004)
12	The duration of EU membership correlates with the total number of biodiversity indicators in the national monitoring systems	European membership requires to adopt international commitments and the expansion of conservation areas: Grodzinska-jurcazak and Cent (2010) EU Nature Directives had positive impact on EU´s biodiversity: Beresford et al. (2016)