Stability and changes in the distribution of Pipiza hoverflies (Diptera, Syrphidae) in Europe under projected future climate conditions

Abstract

Climate change is now considered a significant threat to terrestrial biodiversity. Species distribution models (SDMs) are among the modern tools currently used to assess the potential impacts of climate change on species. Pipiza Fallén, 1810 is a well known aphidophagous hoverfly genus (Diptera, Syrphidae) at the European level, for which sampling has been conducted across the region, and long-term databases and geo-referenced datasets have been established. Therefore, in this work, we investigated the potential current distributions of the European species of this genus and their response to future climate change scenarios, as well as evaluated stability in their ranges and potential changes in species-richness patterns. We applied three climate models (BCC_CSM1.1, CCSM4, HadGEM2-ES) to four representative concentration pathways (RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0, RCP 8.5) for two time frames (2050 and 2070). Our results show that the distribution of most Pipiza species may slightly differ under different climate models. Most Pipiza species were predicted not to be greatly affected by climate change, maintaining their current extent. Percentages of stable areas will remain high (above 50%) for the majority of studied species. According to the predicted turnover of species, northern Europe, could become the richest in terms of species diversity, thus replacing Central Europe as the current hot spot.

North-westward range expansion of the bumblebeeBombus haematurusinto Central Europe is associated with warmer winters and niche conservatism

“…The data points of occurrence were thinned in order to avoid the effect of oversampled localities and the autocorrelation of spatial and climatic variables as in (Biella et al 2017; Milić et al 2019). To do that, records lying closer than a distance of 3.5 km were removed from the dataset while keeping only one of these records, with the enmSdm package for R (R Core Team, 2017; Smith, 2018); the selected threshold was set in order to additively account for the spatial uncertainity of records (e.g.…”

Community and Species-Level Changes of Insect Species Visiting Mangifera indica Flowers Following Hurricane María: “The Devil Is in the Details”

“…If local Cochliomyia have these traits, then it may explain their numerical increases following the hurricanes. Syrphid species, on the other hand, have variable responses (negative and positive) to changes in their abiotic environment but most of this work has come from temperate regions (Radenković et al, 2017;Milić et al, 2019). Clearly more research is needed on the direct and indirect influences of post-hurricane environmental changes to understand the mechanism driving changes of the dominant pollinators of M. indica.…”

Climate change pushes an economic insect to the brink of extinction: A case study for Cyamophila astragalicola in Iran

“…In general insects and pests, however, an increase in habitat suitability was predicted (e.g., Dew et al, 2019;Hu et al, 2015;Milić et al, 2019). Modeling never considers adaptation, but assumes constraint species.…”