Temporal analysis of GBIF data reveals the restructuring of communities following climate change.

Multiple studies revealed an effect of climate change on biodiversity by investigating long-term changes in species distributions and community composition. However, many taxa do not benefit from systematic long-term monitoring programmes, leaving gaps in our current knowledge of climate-induced community turnover. We used data extracted from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to characterize community reorganization under climate change for nine animal taxonomic groups (ants, bats, bees, birds, butterflies, earthworms, frogs, rodents and salamanders), which, for most of them, had never been studied before in this regard. Using a presence-only community temperature index (CTI), reflecting the relative proportion of warm- and cold-adapted species, we tested whether and how species' assemblages were affected by climate change over the last 30 years. Across Europe and North America, we observed an average increase in CTI, consistent with a gradual species turnover driven by climate change. At the local scale, we could observe that the composition of most species assemblages changed according to temperature variations. However, this change in composition always occurred with a lag compared to climate change, suggesting that communities are experiencing a climatic debt. Results suggest that anthropization may play a role in the decoupling between the change in CTI and the change in local temperature. The results of our study highlight an overall thermophilization of assemblages as a response of temperature warming. We demonstrated that this response may exist for a large range of understudied terrestrial animals, and we introduced a framework that can be used in a broader context, opening new opportunities for global change research.

Habitat amount and distribution modify community dynamics under climate change.

Habitat fragmentation may present a major impediment to species range shifts caused by climate change, but how it affects local community dynamics in a changing climate has so far not been adequately investigated empirically. Using long-term monitoring data of butterfly assemblages, we tested the effects of the amount and distribution of semi-natural habitat (SNH), moderated by species traits, on climate-driven species turnover. We found that spatially dispersed SNH favoured the colonisation of warm-adapted and mobile species. In contrast, extinction risk of cold-adapted species increased in dispersed (as opposed to aggregated) habitats and when the amount of SNH was low. Strengthening habitat networks by maintaining or creating stepping-stone patches could thus allow warm-adapted species to expand their range, while increasing the area of natural habitat and its spatial cohesion may be important to aid the local persistence of species threatened by a warming climate.

Decline of parasitic and habitat-specialist species drives taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional homogenization of sub-alpine bumblebee communities.

The ongoing biodiversity crisis is characterised not only by an elevated extinction rate but also can lead to an increasing similarity of species assemblages. This is an issue of major concern, as it can reduce ecosystem resilience and functionality. Changes in the composition of pollinator communities have mainly been described in intensive agricultural lowland areas. In this context, using a replicated survey of historical and recent bumblebee diversity, we aimed here to test how documented changes in climate and land use influenced the potential homogenization of sub-alpine bumblebee communities in southern Norway. We assessed the change in community composition in terms of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional (ß-)diversity, and estimated the impact of various species traits in probabilities of species gains and losses. Overall, we found a strong reduction in functional diversity, but no change in phylogenetic diversity over time. The ß-diversity decreased, especially at high elevations, and this pattern was consistent for taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional ß-diversity. The spatial distribution, measured as the average site occupancy, decreased in habitat-specialist species. This was explained by both a higher risk of species loss and a lower probability of species gain for habitat-specialist and parasitic species than for generalist and social species. These findings demonstrate that a narrow niche breadth may contribute to a higher extinction risk in bumblebee species. This non-random impact of disturbance on species may lead to large-scale biotic homogenisation of communities, a pattern that can be detected by investigating biodiversity changes at different scales and across its multiple facets.

Temperature drives abundance fluctuations, but spatial dynamics is constrained by landscape configuration: Implications for climate-driven range shift in a butterfly.

Prediction of species distributions in an altered climate requires knowledge on how global- and local-scale factors interact to limit their current distributions. Such knowledge can be gained through studies of spatial population dynamics at climatic range margins. Here, using a butterfly (Pyrgus armoricanus) as model species, we first predicted based on species distribution modelling that its climatically suitable habitats currently extend north of its realized range. Projecting the model into scenarios of future climate, we showed that the distribution of climatically suitable habitats may shift northward by an additional 400 km in the future. Second, we used a 13-year monitoring dataset including the majority of all habitat patches at the species northern range margin to assess the synergetic impact of temperature fluctuations and spatial distribution of habitat, microclimatic conditions and habitat quality, on abundance and colonization-extinction dynamics. The fluctuation in abundance between years was almost entirely determined by the variation in temperature during the species larval development. In contrast, colonization and extinction dynamics were better explained by patch area, between-patch connectivity and host plant density. This suggests that the response of the species to future climate change may be limited by future land use and how its host plants respond to climate change. It is, thus, probable that dispersal limitation will prevent P. armoricanus from reaching its potential future distribution. We argue that models of range dynamics should consider the factors influencing metapopulation dynamics, especially at the range edges, and not only broad-scale climate. It includes factors acting at the scale of habitat patches such as habitat quality and microclimate and landscape-scale factors such as the spatial configuration of potentially suitable patches. Knowledge of population dynamics under various environmental conditions, and the incorporation of realistic scenarios of future land use, appears essential to provide predictions useful for actions mitigating the negative effects of climate change.

Is local selection so widespread in river organisms? Fractal geometry of river networks leads to high bias in outlier detection.

Identifying local adaptation is crucial in conservation biology to define ecotypes and establish management guidelines. Local adaptation is often inferred from the detection of loci showing a high differentiation between populations, the so-called FST outliers. Methods of detection of loci under selection are reputed to be robust in most spatial population models. However, using simulations we showed that FST outlier tests provided a high rate of false-positives (up to 60%) in fractal environments such as river networks. Surprisingly, the number of sampled demes was correlated with parameters of population genetic structure, such as the variance of FST s, and hence strongly influenced the rate of outliers. This unappreciated property of river networks therefore needs to be accounted for in genetic studies on adaptation and conservation of river organisms.

Large-scale sampling of beetle communities in Laos shows that conversion of natural forests into plantations leads to a decline in family richness and abundance.

Rapid economic development can pose a threat to the biodiversity of tropical countries. In Laos, this is manifested by the conversion of natural forests into plantations, even though this area is one of the biodiversity hotspots of Southeast Asia. Beetle communities can be good indicators of the impact of anthropogenic pressure on natural ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed for the first time a large-scale inventory of Coleoptera to assess the ecological and anthropogenic drivers of beetle communities in Laos. We examined beetle communities (described at the family level) across the country, located in distinct habitat types, in order to understand the impact of the conversion of natural forest into plantations. We found that beetle abundance had declined in plantations compared to natural forests. At the same time, we observed fewer beetle families in plantations overall, but at the scale of sampling sites there was no difference in local richness compared to natural forests, suggesting a homogenization of beetle communities in anthropogenic habitats. Although results are certainly sensitive to our coarse classification of beetle specimens into families, the negative impact of the conversion of natural tropical forests into agriculture area can still be clearly demonstrated. Our findings highlight that it is possible to make use of unstructured large-scale inventories to explore how beetle communities responds to landscape changes induced by human activities. We suggest that sampling beetle communities can be used as an ecological indicator to monitor anthropogenic impacts on tropical ecosystems.

The invasive land flatworm Obama nungara in La Runion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, the first report of the species for Africa.

The land flatworm Obama nungara, a species originating from South America and already invasive in many European countries, is recorded from La Runion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. This is the first record of O. nungara from this locality and also the first record of the species for Africa. Three specimens were collected in 2021 and 2022, in the communes of Saint Paul, Saint Joseph and Le Tampon, respectively; the three localities are widely separated, with two in the Western part and one in the South-eastern part of the island. This suggests that the species is already present in several locations in La Runion, and it is likely that the species is already present since 2020. The specimen from Saint Paul had the same cox1 haplotype as specimens previously recorded from several countries of Europe; it is hypothesized that the species was imported from Europe, probably from France. We mapped climatic suitability of the species in La Runion and found that O. nungara could potentially invade a large part of the island. One record was apparently associated with the transport of plates of travertine, a construction material which has numerous cavities thus suitable for the transport and survival of adult or cocoons of land flatworms.

Climatic niche and potential distribution of Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A. Gray in Africa.

Mexican sunflower, Tithonia diversifolia (Asteraceae), is an invasive tropical plant species native to Central America. It has spread in more than 70 countries across Asia, Africa and Australia. In Africa, this species is known to disturb native crops and plant communities, but its negative impacts remain underestimated. Moreover, its potential invasion risk has not been investigated so far. A fundamental aspect in the identification and prediction of habitats susceptible to biological invasions lies in the ability of an organism to conserve or change its ecological niche as part of the invasion process. Here, we compared the realised climatic niche of T. diversifolia between its Central American and African ranges. In addition, reciprocal distribution models were calibrated on its native and invaded ranges. Models were combined and projected to current and future climatic conditions in Africa to estimate the potential distribution of this species. Niche overlap given by Schoner's D index was low (0.23), equivalency and similarity tests suggested that the climatic niche of T. diversifolia is not similar in both ranges. However the low expansion (U = 0.09) and very high stability (S = 0.92) indices support climatic niche conservatism for this species in Africa, although it has not filled its entire niche so far. Our combined reciprocal models highlight highly suitable areas for this species in humid regions throughout East, Central and West Africa, then in some parts of South Africa and Madagascar. Future projections indicated that the distribution of climatically suitable habitats will likely remain stable.

Host plant density and patch isolation drive occupancy and abundance at a butterfly's northern range margin.

Marginal populations are usually small, fragmented, and vulnerable to extinction, which makes them particularly interesting from a conservation point of view. They are also the starting point of range shifts that result from climate change, through a process involving colonization of newly suitable sites at the cool margin of species distributions. Hence, understanding the processes that drive demography and distribution at high-latitude populations is essential to forecast the response of species to global changes. We investigated the relative importance of solar irradiance (as a proxy for microclimate), habitat quality, and connectivity on occupancy, abundance, and population stability at the northern range margin of the Oberthür's grizzled skipper butterfly Pyrgus armoricanus. For this purpose, butterfly abundance was surveyed in a habitat network consisting of 50 habitat patches over 12 years. We found that occupancy and abundance (average and variability) were mostly influenced by the density of host plants and the spatial isolation of patches, while solar irradiance and grazing frequency had only an effect on patch occupancy. Knowing that the distribution of host plants extends further north, we hypothesize that the actual variable limiting the northern distribution of P. armoricanus might be its dispersal capacity that prevents it from reaching more northern habitat patches. The persistence of this metapopulation in the face of global changes will thus be fundamentally linked to the maintenance of an efficient network of habitats.

Continental-scale patterns of pathogen prevalence: a case study on the corncrake.

Pathogen infections can represent a substantial threat to wild populations, especially those already limited in size. To determine how much variation in the pathogens observed among fragmented populations is caused by ecological factors, one needs to examine systems where host genetic diversity is consistent among the populations, thus controlling for any potentially confounding genetic effects. Here, we report geographic variation in haemosporidian infection among European populations of corncrake. This species now occurs in fragmented populations, but there is little genetic structure and equally high levels of genetic diversity among these populations. We observed a longitudinal gradient of prevalence from western to Eastern Europe negatively correlated with national agricultural yield, but positively correlated with corncrake census population sizes when only the most widespread lineage is considered. This likely reveals a possible impact of local agriculture intensity, which reduced host population densities in Western Europe and, potentially, insect vector abundance, thus reducing the transmission of pathogens. We conclude that in the corncrake system, where metapopulation dynamics resulted in variations in local census population sizes, but not in the genetic impoverishment of these populations, anthropogenic activity has led to a reduction in host populations and pathogen prevalence.

Mapping species distributions with MAXENT using a geographically biased sample of presence data: a performance assessment of methods for correcting sampling bias.

MAXENT is now a common species distribution modeling (SDM) tool used by conservation practitioners for predicting the distribution of a species from a set of records and environmental predictors. However, datasets of species occurrence used to train the model are often biased in the geographical space because of unequal sampling effort across the study area. This bias may be a source of strong inaccuracy in the resulting model and could lead to incorrect predictions. Although a number of sampling bias correction methods have been proposed, there is no consensual guideline to account for it. We compared here the performance of five methods of bias correction on three datasets of species occurrence: one "virtual" derived from a land cover map, and two actual datasets for a turtle (Chrysemys picta) and a salamander (Plethodon cylindraceus). We subjected these datasets to four types of sampling biases corresponding to potential types of empirical biases. We applied five correction methods to the biased samples and compared the outputs of distribution models to unbiased datasets to assess the overall correction performance of each method. The results revealed that the ability of methods to correct the initial sampling bias varied greatly depending on bias type, bias intensity and species. However, the simple systematic sampling of records consistently ranked among the best performing across the range of conditions tested, whereas other methods performed more poorly in most cases. The strong effect of initial conditions on correction performance highlights the need for further research to develop a step-by-step guideline to account for sampling bias. However, this method seems to be the most efficient in correcting sampling bias and should be advised in most cases.