The most important threat connected

The most important threat connected with climate change is transformation of major vegetation types (Hickler et al., 2012). Hanewinkel et al. (2013) predicted changes in structure of dominant tree species in Europe that are consistent with our results. Retreat of pioneer species, which dominate in European forests, would cause retreat of rare types of ecosystems, in which these species are foundational elements, but occur in specific conditions, e.g. dunes, peatlands etc. This phenomena may be especially clear at their southern and eastern margins of distribution. In Europe, climate change is claimed to be one of the main threats to 24 of 42 threatened forest plant communities types (Janssen et al., 2016). Decreased survival of certain species (e.g. Sáenz-Romero et al., 2017) may also decrease availability of old trees, which are an important microhabitat for other organisms, e.g. epiphytes (Mežaka et al., 2012; Király et al., 2013). On the other hand, predicted losses of suitable habitats for the species studied are lower than those predicted for North America by McKenney et al. (2007), which may suggest lower threat levels for European species. Nevertheless, this difference may also be caused by the uncertainty connected with the differences among GCMs.