Research seminar: CHANGES TO THE CLIMATIC ASSOCIATIONS OF BUTTERFLY COMMUNITIES OVER A MOUNTAIN ELEVATION GRADIENT BETWEEN 2004/05 AND 2017

As species shift their distributions in response to climatic change, the consequences for ecological communities will depend on both the capacity of existing species populations to survive, and of populations of range-shifting species to colonise sites beyond their current distributions. Across elevation gradients in mountain ranges, species associated with warm conditions are expected to colonise uphill from the lowlands, whilst cool-associated species are expected to become increasingly restricted to high elevations. In 2004/05 and 2017, we sampled butterfly communities across 120 field sites over a 600-2250 m elevation gradient in the Sierra de Guadarrama (central Spain). Over 13 years, some species expanded the upper limits of their distributions to higher elevations, whilst others showed contractions from their low-elevation range margins. I quantify the climatic associations of these butterfly communities using the Community Temperature Index (CTI), and test whether butterfly community composition has tracked regional warming since 2004/05. I test for evidence that local habitats have enabled populations of some resident, cool-adapted species to withstand warming conditions, and discuss the implications for adapting conservation to climate change.

Seminario organizado por el Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Evolutiva del Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN), CSIC.