Abstract. Climate change influences the global and regional distribution of many
species. For thermophilic insects, range expansions towards the north and to
higher elevations are expected in the course of climatic warming across the
Northern Hemisphere. The distribution of the European mantis (Mantis religiosa) has recently
expanded from Mediterranean regions in France to Hesse in central Germany.
This is interpreted as a response to rising mean temperatures, and further
northward expansion is expected to occur with increasing climate warming. In
this study, potential changes in the regional distribution across Hesse were
modeled for Mantis religiosa using the present distribution and climate across Europe as
the baseline. We estimated potential changes in the regional distribution for
two time periods until 2080 based on two climate change scenarios. The
results showed that the current range of M. religiosa in Hesse is smaller than expected
based on its climatic niche, i.e., the distribution is not in equilibrium
with the present climate. With climate warming the model predicts an
expansion of the potential distribution for the period 2041–2060. For the
period 2061–2080, our model predicts, however, a range contraction in
spite of continued warming. This unexpected result warrants further
investigation in order to elucidate whether the ongoing climate change may
have negative consequences for thermophilic species such as M. religiosa.
There is only limited scientific evidence with varying results on the association between hospital admissions and low ambient temperatures. Furthermore, there has been no research in Northern Europe on cold-associated morbidity. Therefore, this study investigated the associations of daily wintertime temperature and cold spells with cardiorespiratory hospital admissions in the Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. Daily number of non-elective hospital admissions for 2001–2017 was obtained from the national hospital discharge register and meteorological data from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Quasi-Poisson regression models were fitted, controlling for potential confounders such as time trend, weekday, holidays, air pollution, barometric pressure, and influenza. The associations of cold season daily mean ambient temperature and cold spells with hospital admissions were estimated using a penalized distributed lag linear models with 21 lag days. Decreased wintertime ambient temperature was associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for myocardial infarction in the whole population (relative risk [RR] per 1 °C decrease in temperature: 1.017, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.002–1.032). An increased risk of hospital admission for respiratory diseases (RR: 1.012, 95% CI: 1.002, 1.022) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (RR: 1.031, 95% CI: 1.006, 1.056) was observed only in the ≥ 75 years age group. There was an independent effect of cold spell days only for asthma admissions (RR: 2.348, 95% CI: 1.026, 5.372) in the all-ages group. Cold temperature increases the need for acute hospital care due to myocardial infarction and respiratory causes during winter in a northern climate.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.