October
30, 2015
New
research led by ecologists at the University of York shows that certain species
of moths and butterflies are becoming more common, and others rarer, as species
differ in how they respond to climate change.
Collaborating
with the Natural Environment Research Council's Centre for Ecology and
Hydrology, the charity Butterfly Conservation, the University of Reading and
Rothamsted Research, scientists analysed how the abundance and distribution of
155 species of
British butterflies and moths have changed since the 1970s.
Using
data collected by thousands of volunteers through 'citizen science' schemes,
responses to recent climate change were seen to vary greatly from species to
species.
Published
in Science Advances, this
research shows variation among species is attributed to differing sensitivity
to climate change, and also because species vary in how much the climate has
changed for them (their 'exposure').
Sensitivity
is a measure of how much species' numbers change as a result of year-to-year
changes in the weather - each species is sensitive to different aspects of the
climate, such as winter temperature or summer rainfall. Variation in how much
the climate they are sensitive to has changed for them - their 'exposure' - is
also a contributing factor in their varied responses.
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