Biodiversité

It is important to understand the factors affecting community stability because ecosystem function is increasingly at risk from biodiversity loss. Here, we evaluate how a key factor, the position of local environmental conditions within the thermal range of the species, influences the stability of butterfly communities at a continental scale.

Location Spain, UK and Finland.

Time period 1999–2017. Major taxa studied Butterflies.

Many insects moving north in response to climate change find they have nowhere to go in Britain's intensively managed landscapes, according to new research.

We looked at 130 species to see which will be the winners and losers from global warming;

Butterflies are rather like Goldilocks, preferring conditions to be neither too hot nor too cold, but “just right”. Under climate change, the temperature at any given time of summer is, on average, getting warmer, leaving butterflies (and their nocturnal cousins, the moths) with the challenge of how to remain in their optimal temperature window.

From the green-fanged tube web spider with a nasty bite to the Asian box tree caterpillar that destroys hedges, Britain’s wildlife is looking a little more exotic in places.Climate change has caused dozens of species to colonise new parts of the country in the past decade, a study has found. GETTY