Global warming favours light-coloured insects in Europe

Dirk Zeuss (), Roland Brandl, Martin Brändle, Carsten Rahbek and Stefan Brunzel
Additional contact information
Dirk Zeuss: Faculty of Biology, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Roland Brandl: Faculty of Biology, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Martin Brändle: Faculty of Biology, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Carsten Rahbek: Center for Macroecology, Climate and Evolution, the Natural History Museum of Denmark
Stefan Brunzel: Faculty of Biology, Philipps-Universität Marburg

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Associations between biological traits of animals and climate are well documented by physiological and local-scale studies. However, whether an ecophysiological phenomenon can affect large-scale biogeographical patterns of insects is largely unknown. Insects absorb energy from the sun to become mobile, and their colouration varies depending on the prevailing climate where they live. Here we show, using data of 473 European butterfly and dragonfly species, that dark-coloured insect species are favoured in cooler climates and light-coloured species in warmer climates. By comparing distribution maps of dragonflies from 1988 and 2006, we provide support for a mechanistic link between climate, functional traits and species that affects geographical distributions even at continental scales. Our results constitute a foundation for better forecasting the effect of climate change on many insect groups.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4874 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4874

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4874

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().