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Climatic niche breadth determines the response of bumblebees (Bombus spp.) to climate warming in mountain areas of the Northern Iberian Peninsula

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Abstract

Studies examining species range shifts in the face of climate change have consistently found that response patterns are complex and varied, suggesting that ecological traits might be affecting species response. However, knowledge of how the traits of a species determine its response to climate change is still poorly understood. Here we investigate the role of species-specific climate niche breadth in forecasting bumblebee (Bombus spp.) responses to regional climate warming in the Cantabrian Range (north-western Iberian Peninsula). Climate niche breadth was defined using known data for occurrences of specific species at their continental (i.e., European) scale of distribution. For each bumblebee species, climate niche breadth was found to be related to (1) the elevational range shifts of species between their historical (1988–1989) and recent (2007–2009) distribution and (2) the variation in the climatic conditions of the localities they inhabited (i.e., the local climate space) between both study periods. Our results show a strong relationship between climate niche breadth, particularly thermal niche breadth, and the response of bumblebee species to climate warming, but only when this response was determined as variations in local climate space. The main conclusions of our work are thus twofold. First, variations in the climatic conditions underlying range shifts are useful in making accurate assessments of the impact of climate change on species distributions. Second, climate niche breadth is a particularly informative ecological trait for forecasting variations in species responses to climate change.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Amalia Segura for helping with fieldwork. Javier Rodríguez-Pérez and Ainhoa Magrach provided helpful comments that greatly improved the quality of the manuscript. Ronnie Lendrum edited the English. Funding was provided by the Regional Government of Asturias through an FICYT Grant (BP08-047) to EFP and by the Spanish Government through the project CGL2009-11302 (MICCIN) to JRO. PR gathered the continental distribution data under the frame of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) Grant Agreement No 244090, STEP Project (Status and Trends of European Pollinators, http://www.step-project.net). During the process of publishing this work, JMH was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through a ‘Juan de la Cierva’ postdoctoral fellowship (FPDI-2013-16335) (Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España) and is currently supported by the Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (FCT) through contract reference IF/00001/2015.

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Author notes

  1. José M. Herrera

    Present address: Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Évora, Casa Cordovil 2a Andar, Rua Dom Augusto Eduardo Nunes, 7000-651, Évora, Portugal

  2. Emilie F. Ploquin

    Present address: NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Biological Records Centre, Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, OX10 8BB, Oxfordshire, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biología de Organismos y Sistemas, Unidad Mixta de Investigación en Biodiversidad (CSIC-UO-PA), Universidad de Oviedo, 33071, Oviedo, Spain

    José M. Herrera, Emilie F. Ploquin & José R. Obeso

  2. Institut des Biosciences, Laboratoire de Zoologie, Université de Mons, Place du Parc 23, 7000, Mons, Belgium

    Pierre Rasmont

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Herrera, J.M., Ploquin, E.F., Rasmont, P. et al. Climatic niche breadth determines the response of bumblebees (Bombus spp.) to climate warming in mountain areas of the Northern Iberian Peninsula. J Insect Conserv 22, 771–779 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-018-0100-x

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