Abstract
Climate change scenarios predict losses of cold-adapted species from insular locations, such as middle high mountains at temperate latitudes, where alpine habitats extend for a few hundred meters above the timberline. However, there are very few studies following the fates of such species in the currently warming climate. We compared transect monitoring data on an alpine butterfly, Erebia epiphron (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) from summit elevations of two such alpine islands (above 1300 m) in the Jesenik Mts and Krkonose Mts, Czech Republic. We asked if population density, relative total population abundance and phenology recorded in the late 1990s (past) differs that recorded early in 2010s (present) and if the patterns are consistent in the two areas, which are separated by 150 km. We found that butterfly numbers recorded per transect walk decreased between the past and the present, but relative population abundances remained unchanged. This contradictory observation is due to an extension in the adult flight period, which currently begins ca 10 days earlier and lasts for longer, resulting in the same total abundances with less prominent peaks in abundance. We interpret this development as desynchronization of annual cohort development, which might be caused by milder winters with less predictable snow cover and more variable timing of larval diapause termination. Although both the Jesenik and Krkonose populations of E. epiphron are abundant enough to withstand such desynchronization, decreased synchronicity of annual cohort development may be detrimental for innumerable small populations of relic species in mountains across the globe.
Highlights
Both poleward (Parmesan, 2006; Chen et al, 2011) and uphill (Konvicka et al, 2003; Lenoir et al, 2008; Roth et al, 2014) shifts in the distributions of species and shifts in their phenology (Altermatt, 2010; Diamond et al, 2011) are widely recognised as both evidence and major outcomes of the ongoing climate change, or global warming
This paper reports the results of monitoring a high mountain butterfly, the Mountain Ringlet Erebia epiphron ssp. silesiana (Meyer et Dür, 1852) in the Jeseník Mts and Krkonoše Mts in the Czech Republic
Erebia epiphron (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae), a member of the species-rich and mostly cold-adapted butterfly genus Erebia Dalman, 1816, is a mountain grasslands species distributed throughout most European mountains with areas above the timberline, except in Scandinavia and the mountains on the Iberian peninsula and in the southern Balkans, but including mountains in Britain and some low mountain ranges in Central Europe
Summary
Both poleward (Parmesan, 2006; Chen et al, 2011) and uphill (Konvicka et al, 2003; Lenoir et al, 2008; Roth et al, 2014) shifts in the distributions of species and shifts in their phenology (Altermatt, 2010; Diamond et al, 2011) are widely recognised as both evidence and major outcomes of the ongoing climate change, or global warming. In human-dominated landscapes, common taxa, including pests and pathogens, often perform better in tracking favourable thermal environments, whereas habitat specialists may lag behind, entrapped in climatically unsuitable areas (Warren et al, 2001; Oliver & Morecroft, 2014) These developments may imperil the very existence of numerous species, which are losing their habitats. Contrary to spacious high-altitude habitats found, e.g., in the Alps, the American Rockies or the Pyrenees, mountains at lower altitudes, such as the Hercynian system of Central Europe (Jeník, 1998), have only tiny treeless patches on their summits Species restricted to such habitat islands, typically relics of a cooler past, may have nowhere to go if the climate warms up and the timberline ascends. In addition to the scientific and cultural value of these species and communities, such isolated relic populations are often genetically distinct as a result of their long isolation (Schmitt et al, 2006, 2014; Konvicka et al, 2014), sometimes forming endemic taxa at the specific or subspecific level
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