Climatic Risk Atlas of European Butterflies

Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers

“…Recent climate change has already affected butterfly distributions [90], and future changes, which are predicted to be greater in extent than recent historical changes, are likely to have even more severe impacts [17]. These patterns are consistent with the few studies on bees; Williams et al [50] found a relationship between climatic niche and declines in British bumblebees, whereas Dormann et al [51] projected general declines in future bee species richness in Europe.…”

“…With the exception of butterflies [17], data for other pollinators, including other bee species, are fragmentary because of the lack of coordinated monitoring programmes. Consequently, scientists have had to rely on data collected in less standardized ways to test for changes in the pollinator community, such as comparing recording frequencies between time periods or comparing species richness ( [18], Box 1).…”

“…[39]39]. Interactive, non-additive effects, where one sub-lethal driver increases the severity of another driver, can help explain ongoing declines in wild and managed pollinators (Box 3; [17,31,40]). However, while awareness of the importance of interacting drivers is increasing [32], most studies have analysed the impacts of specific drivers in isolation, and therefore evidence of interactive effects is scant (but see [41]).…”

Climatic Risk and Distribution Atlas of European Bumblebees

“…Tutin et al, 2001;Settele et al, 2008;Kudrna et al, 2011). In contrast, for bees, despite the great interest of biologists and the wider society, the complexity of the taxonomy considerably delayed the establishment of a database.…”

Butterfly abundance in a warming climate: patterns in space and time are not congruent

“…The core assumption is that similar mechanisms operate across space and across time (the space-for-time substitution). Niche (bioclimate) models are increasingly the primary tool for identifying the risks of climate change and informing future conservation policy for biodiversity (Thomas et al 2004), and specifically butterflies (Settele et al 2008), in spite of criticism that they generally ignore population biology or biotic interactions (Araujo and Luoto 2007).…”