Functional traits help to explain half-century long shifts in pollinator distributions.

Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez,W. Daniel Kissling,Jacobus C. Biesmeijer,Markus Franzén,Michiel F. WallisDeVries,Luísa G. Carvalheiro

doi:10.1038/srep24451

Abstract

Changes in climate and land use can have important impacts on biodiversity. Species respond to such environmental modifications by adapting to new conditions or by shifting their geographic distributions towards more suitable areas. The latter might be constrained by species’ functional traits that influence their ability to move, reproduce or establish. Here, we show that functional traits related to dispersal, reproduction, habitat use and diet have influenced how three pollinator groups (bees, butterflies and hoverflies) responded to changes in climate and land-use in the Netherlands since 1950. Across the three pollinator groups, we found pronounced areal range expansions (>53%) and modelled range shifts towards the north (all taxa: 17–22 km), west (bees: 14 km) and east (butterflies: 11 km). The importance of specific functional traits for explaining distributional changes varied among pollinator groups. Larval diet preferences (i.e. carnivorous vs. herbivorous/detritivorous and nitrogen values of host plants, respectively) were important for hoverflies and butterflies, adult body size for hoverflies, and flight period length for all groups. Moreover, interactions among multiple traits were important to explain species’ geographic range shifts, suggesting that taxon-specific multi-trait analyses are needed to predict how global change will affect biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Highlights

Changes in climate and land use can have important effects on species distributions and may affect the supply of ecosystem services[1]
Our results show that multiple functional traits related to dispersal, reproduction, habitat use, and diet partly allow to predict such range changes, but the relevance of specific traits differs among pollinator groups
The fact that no clear relationship was found between bee species traits and their latitudinal and longitudinal range shifts suggests that other traits might be important to explain the range shifts of this group

Summary

Introduction

Changes in climate and land use can have important effects on species distributions and may affect the supply of ecosystem services (e.g. pollination, carbon storage, clean water supplies, and pest control)[1]. Large-scale land-use changes have ceased recently highly modified landscapes with intensive agriculture and high nitrogen deposition levels remain[3,4]. This poses key challenges for conserving biodiversity[5]. Whether habitat use is restricted or not: one habitat type vs several (bees); predominant association with anthropogenic CORINE habitat types (agricultural and urban as: generalists) or not (semi-natural habitats: specialists) (butterflies); number of CORINE macro habitats to which adults are mainly associated: one vs several (hoverflies). Nitrogen value of host plants: average Ellenberg nitrogen indicator values of butterflies’ larval host plants (describing soil fertility conditions and nitrogen preferences)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion