Ellis, E.E. orcid.org/0000-0001-7862-3353, Antão, L.H. orcid.org/0000-0001-6612-9366, Davrinche, A. orcid.org/0000-0003-0339-2997 et al. (11 more authors) (2025) Recent community warming of moths in Finland is driven by extinction in the north and colonisation in the south. Nature Communications, 16. 7063. ISSN: 2041-1723
Abstract
As the climate warms, species are shifting their ranges to match their climatic niches, leading to the warming of ecological communities (thermophilisation). We currently have little understanding of the population-level processes driving this community-level warming, particularly at rapidly warming high latitudes. Using 30 years of high-resolution moth monitoring data across a 1200 km latitudinal gradient in Finland, we find that higher latitude communities are experiencing more rapid thermophilisation. We attribute this spatial variation to colonisation-extinction dynamics, both for the full community and for thermal affinity groups. Our findings reveal that latitudinal variation in the pathways underpinning thermophilisation is the net outcome of opposite forces: in the north, community warming is driven by the extinction of cold-affiliated species, while in the south it is driven by high colonisation rates of warm-affiliated species. Thus, we show how species’ thermal affinities influence community reorganisation and highlight the elevated extinction risk among cold-affiliated species.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Climate-change ecology; Community ecology |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 18 Aug 2025 14:52 |
Last Modified: | 18 Aug 2025 14:52 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-025-62216-9 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:230468 |