Abstract
One of the best documented effects of climate change on biodiversity are shifts in phenology. However, long-term data quantifying and projecting the expected changes in phenology associated with climate warming are limited to a few well-recorded areas in the world. In the absence of temporal recording, an alternative approach is to determine the phenological response of species along marked gradients in climate or along latitudinal or altitudinal transects (space-for-time substitution). We studied the phenology (timing and duration of the flight period) of butterflies in 2006 along an altitudinal gradient (900-1680 m; estimated temperature lapse rate = -6.6°C/km) in the Serrania de Cuenca (central Spain) at the assemblage and individual species levels. Timing of the flight period was later for assemblages at high than at low altitudes. A similar trend of an increasing delay in the flight period with altitude was recorded for some individual species. However, there were also some exceptions to this pattern regardless of the number of sites and the altitudinal ranges of the species, suggesting possible local adaptation to regional climate. The duration of the flight period was shorter at high altitudes for assemblages, but this trend was not mirrored in the response of individual species. The results partly support substituting space-for-time when assessing the potential effect of climate change on phenophases such as the timing of the flight period, but we recommend extreme caution in extrapolating the results in the absence of information on how the responses of populations differ.
Highlights
Phenology has attracted increasing attention in recent years because it is sensitive to climate change (Parmesan, 2006)
We firstly studied the altitudinal patterns in timing and duration of the flight period of whole assemblages of butterflies and that of the individual species
There was a 19 day-difference between the mean dates for the butterfly assemblages at lowest and the highest sites. This delay was reflected in a positive and significant relationship between the mean date for assemblages and altitude [R2 = 0.60, P = 0.009, n = 10; mean date = 80.64 + 24.48*elevation], which indicates a delay of c. 24 days in the phenology of butterflies for every km increase in altitude (Fig. 2)
Summary
Phenology has attracted increasing attention in recent years because it is sensitive to climate change (Parmesan, 2006). Most phenological studies report marked temporal trends in numerous aspects of plant and animal life cycles associated with warmer temperatures (e.g., Walther et al, 2002). Those surveys usually need to be carried out over long periods of time (several decades) if trends in phenology are to be detected (Parmesan, 2006). An alternative approach to studying temporal variability in phenology is to study the climate determined changes in phenology that occur along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients, i.e., by using a space-for-time substitution (Hodkinson, 2005). It is suggested that the responses of species to existing gradients in climate could be used to predict the likely effects of future climate change (Whittaker & Tribe, 1996; Fielding et al, 1999; but see Phillimore et al, 2010; Hodgson et al, 2011)
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