How butterflies keep their cool: physical and ecological traits influence thermoregulatory ability and population trends

Bladon, AJ, Lewis, M, Bladon, EK, Buckton, SJ, Corbett, S, Ewing, SR, Hayes, MP, Hitchcock, GE, Knock, R, Lucas, C, McVeigh, A, Menéndez, R, Walker, JM, Fayle, TM and Turner, EC, 2020. How butterflies keep their cool: physical and ecological traits influence thermoregulatory ability and population trends. Journal of Animal Ecology, 89 (11), pp. 2440-2450. ISSN 0021-8790

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Abstract

Understanding which factors influence the ability of individuals to respond to changing temperatures is fundamental to species conservation under climate change.

We investigated how a community of butterflies responded to fine-scale changes in air temperature, and whether species-specific responses were predicted by ecological or morphological traits.

Using data collected across a UK reserve network, we investigated the ability of 29 butterfly species to buffer thoracic temperature against changes in air temperature. First, we tested whether differences were attributable to taxonomic family, morphology or habitat association. We then investigated the relative importance of two buffering mechanisms: behavioural thermoregulation versus fine-scale microclimate selection. Finally, we tested whether species' responses to changing temperatures predicted their population trends from a UK-wide dataset.

We found significant interspecific variation in buffering ability, which varied between families and increased with wing length. We also found interspecific differences in the relative importance of the two buffering mechanisms, with species relying on microclimate selection suffering larger population declines over the last 40 years than those that could alter their temperature behaviourally.

Our results highlight the importance of understanding how different species respond to fine-scale temperature variation, and the value of taking microclimate into account in conservation management to ensure favourable conditions are maintained for temperature-sensitive species.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Animal Ecology
Creators:	Bladon, A.J., Lewis, M., Bladon, E.K., Buckton, S.J., Corbett, S., Ewing, S.R., Hayes, M.P., Hitchcock, G.E., Knock, R., Lucas, C., McVeigh, A., Menéndez, R., Walker, J.M., Fayle, T.M. and Turner, E.C.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	November 2020
Volume:	89
Number:	11
ISSN:	0021-8790
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/1365-2656.13319 DOI 1387664 Other
Rights:	© 2020 the authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	16 Jul 2021 15:35
Last Modified:	16 Jul 2021 15:35
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/43515

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