24 species with ‘U-shaped’ responses were omitted as not ecologically realistic, and 6 species with a significantly neutral (without a relationship, named ‘None’) response were omitted as not preferring any NLC-F. a-h , Response curves of plant species to NLC-F. k-l , Summary statistics of preferred NLC-Fs. a , Summary of all 1 091 native plants responding to NLC-F (with percentages in parentheses). b-d , Response curves of species with decreasing (each red line indicates one species) ( b ), unimodal (each blue line indicates one species) ( c ) and increasing (each green line indicates one species) ( d ) relations with NLC-F. The dark black line is the average response curve of each species group. The yellow line indicates the standardized proportion of grids with different NLC-Fs in the Netherlands. Both the occurrence probability and the standardized proportion (percentage) range from 0% to 100% and are indicated by the y axis. e-h , Species with unimodal shapes are split into four categories based on their preferred NLC-Fs ( e , species with preferred NLC-Fs ranging from 0–25%; f , species with preferred NLC-Fs ranging from 25–50%; g , species with preferred NLC-Fs ranging from 50–75%; h , species with preferred NLC-Fs ranging from 75–100%). i-j , Statistics of preferred NLC-Fs of all 1 091 native plant species ( i , summary of 1 091 plant species’ preferred NLC-Fs; j , percentage of species in different categories, including 0%, 0–25%, 25–50%, 50–75%, 75–100% and 100%). k-l , Statistics of preferred NLC-Fs of species with unimodal shapes ( k , summary of plant species’ preferred NLC-Fs; l , histogram of preferred NLC-Fs of plant species with unimodal relations with NLC-Fs). All mean values are means ± SE. (DOCX)