Global Warming: Butterflies on the Move
Sierra de Guadarrama, Spain

The first in a three-week series of Bio Snapshots covering important new research on global warming and biodiversity.

Global warming is relocating the butterflies of Spain’s Sierra de Guadarrama mountains.

Temperatures around the Sierra de Guadarrama have risen 1.3 degrees C in the past 30 years. The warming has forced 16 butterfly species to shift their habitat to higher, cooler elevations. On average, the butterflies have ascended 212 m in three decades.

As the populations are squeezed closer to the tops of the peaks, the butterflies now have one-third less space in which to live than they did thirty years ago. As global warming causes available habitat to shrink further, extinctions may occur at the lower margins.

Researchers
Robert J. Wilson, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid (lead) 

Paper
“Changes to the elevational limits and extent of species ranges associated with climate change ,” Ecology Letters, (2005) 8: 1138–1146.

Image Credits 
Spain in January—Blue Marble Next Generation, satellite: NASA Terra, sensor: MODIS
Sierra de Guadarrama—satellite: NASA Landsat, sensor: ETM+
Butterflies—David Gutiérrez