Combining range and phenology shifts offers a winning strategy for boreal Lepidoptera

Abstract

Species can adapt to climate change by adjusting in situ or by dispersing to new areas, and these strategies may complement or enhance each other. Here, we investigate temporal shifts in phenology and spatial shifts in northern range boundaries for 289 Lepidoptera species by using long-term data sampled over two decades. While 40% of the species neither advanced phenology nor moved northward, nearly half (47%) -used one of the two strategies. The strongest positive population trends was observed for the minority of species (13%) that both advanced flight phenology and shifted their northern range boundaries northward. We show that, for Boreal Lepidoptera, a combination of phenology and range shifts is the most viable strategy under a changing climate. Effectively, this may divide species into winners and losers based on their propensity to capitalize on this combination, with potentially large consequences on future community composition.

Phenological sensitivity and seasonal variability explain climate-driven trends in Mediterranean butterflies

“…Overall, our findings contrast with the expected pattern of phenological advancement under a global warming scenario [1,5]. Indeed, recent work based on similar data and lengths of time series to our study supports the idea that in recent decades, phenological advancements may not have been as common as predicted [13]. Only 8% of the species in our dataset underwent significant advances and, surprisingly, 15% of the species in fact delayed their phenology.…”

“…In the UK, Macgregor et al . [12] found a positive effect for phenological advancement on abundance trends, but as in our work, this effect has not been found in other regions [13,30]. The effect in the UK was only found for multi-voltine species, so the relatively small number of multi-voltine species in our study dataset after removing the multi-voltine species with overlapping generations ( n = 16) in comparison to the dataset of Macgregor et al .…”

“…The ecological literature in recent decades has highlighted how changes in the population size [5–7], distribution [3,8,9] and phenology [5,10,11] of butterflies are being driven by an ever-warmer climate. Nevertheless, how population trends are being affected by these various changes is less clear (but see [12,13]).…”

Widespread Mismatch Between Phenology and Climate in Human‐Dominated Landscapes

“…Our findings on phenological shifts can be situated in a broader context of ecological responses to climate change, including phenological, distributional, and physiological responses (Hällfors et al., 2021). Apart from plant phenology, recent studies on plant migration and productivity have also shown lags in biotic responses to climate change.…”

A strong decline of the endangered Apollo butterfly over 20 years in the archipelago of southern Finland

“…In Finland, for example, 30.3% of the assessed Lepidoptera taxa (n = 716) are red listed (Hyvärinen et al 2019). In comparison to central European countries, however, Lepidoptera in Nordic countries, such as Finland, are still doing relatively well (Hällfors et al 2021).…”