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Metapopulation dynamics and climate change in a model system: the silver-spotted skipper

模型系统中的种群动态和气候变化：银斑船长

基本信息

批准号：
NE/G006377/1
负责人：
Christian David Thomas
金额：
$ 25.39万
依托单位：
University of York
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2009
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2009 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FG006377%2F1
关键词：
Metapopulation dynamics climate change model

项目摘要

Habitat loss and climate change together represent a great threat to biodiversity because species face the difficult task of shifting their distributions across human-dominated landscapes in which suitable habitats are present only as scattered fragments of formerly more widespread types of vegetation. New approaches are needed to understand and predict accurately the responses of species to these environmental drivers of change when they act in combination. The complication is that climate change itself alters habitat quality and quantity, by changing the availability of suitable 'microclimates'. For example, our study species, the silver-spotted skipper butterfly, reaches the cool northern edge of its European distribution in England. As such, it used to be restricted to exceptionally hot microclimates (short grass on South-facing hillsides) in the early 1980s, but has recently colonised cooler habitats (taller grassland, and East, West, and North-facing hillsides) as the climate has warmed. Habitats that used to be too cool are now accessible to the species; although some south-facing grassland may have started to become too hot and dry for the insect. Increasing suitability of East, West, and North-facing hillsides has resulted in a major increase in the amount of grassland that is thermally acceptable, allowing the silver-spotted skipper to start to expand its distribution. However, the situation is complicated because year-to-year variation in climatic conditions constantly alters the suitability of each remaining area of calcareous grassland (depending on the slope, aspect and vegetation). The habitat available to the skipper is a shifting mosaic depending on the weather conditions each year, making it difficult to provide clear guidelines for conservation managers to allow the species to survive and extend its distribution. As the climate changes, this interaction between climate and habitat is likely to complicate the process of conservation planning and habitat management for the many rare species that are now restricted to localised areas of habitat in modern landscapes. To date, the feedback loop between climate and the landscape-scale distribution of habitat has not been incorporated in any scientific modelling framework, but this is required before believable and testable projections of species responses to climate change can be made. We will develop a new approach using a population model that incorporates variation over time in climate-driven habitat availability. These models will be developed using large-scale data on the British distribution, habitat and population sizes of the silver-spotted skipper butterfly for the period 1982 to 2001. The models will then be used to predict post-2001 changes, and we will test our projections against new information on changes in habitat and distribution for the skipper between 2002 and 2010. The project will allow us to test how accurately we can predict changes in species distributions as they respond to climate change, and the importance of climate, habitat and their interactions in explaining the rates at which species extend their distributions. This step is vital to determine whether conservation actions can alleviate the effects of climate change on biodiversity, and which actions are most efficient in this process of adapting conservation to climate change. We will make the software that we develop available to other scientists, policy-makers and conservation practitioners, allowing our approach to be applied to the conservation of the many other rare species facing the same problems as the silver-spotted skipper.

栖息地丧失和气候变化共同对生物多样性构成了巨大威胁，因为物种面临着在人类主导的景观中改变其分布的艰巨任务，在这些景观中，合适的栖息地只是以前更广泛的植被类型的分散片段。需要新的方法来准确理解和预测物种对这些环境变化驱动因素的反应，当它们联合作用时。复杂的是，气候变化本身通过改变合适的“小气候”的可用性来改变栖息地的质量和数量。例如，我们研究的物种，银斑蝶，到达了英格兰欧洲分布区凉爽的北方边缘。因此，在20世纪80年代初，它曾经被限制在异常炎热的小气候（朝南山坡上的矮草），但随着气候变暖，最近已经殖民了较冷的栖息地（较高的草地，以及东，西，北山坡）。过去过于凉爽的草地现在对这种昆虫来说是可以接近的;尽管一些朝南的草地可能已经开始变得太热和干燥。东、西、北向山坡的适宜性增加，导致可接受热量的草地数量大幅增加，使银斑姬鹬开始扩大其分布范围。然而，情况很复杂，因为气候条件的逐年变化不断改变每个剩余石灰质草原区域的适宜性（取决于坡度、地形和植被）。可供船长使用的栖息地是一个不断变化的马赛克，取决于每年的天气条件，因此很难为保护管理人员提供明确的指导方针，以允许该物种生存并扩大其分布。随着气候变化，气候和栖息地之间的这种相互作用可能会使许多稀有物种的保护规划和栖息地管理过程复杂化，这些物种现在仅限于现代景观中的局部栖息地。迄今为止，气候与生境的大规模分布之间的反馈回路尚未纳入任何科学建模框架，但在对物种对气候变化的反应作出可信和可检验的预测之前，需要这样做。我们将开发一种新的方法，使用人口模型，将随着时间的推移在气候驱动的栖息地可用性的变化。这些模型将利用1982年至2001年期间关于英国银斑蝶分布、栖息地和种群规模的大规模数据来开发。然后，这些模型将被用来预测2001年后的变化，我们将根据2002年至2010年期间船长栖息地和分布变化的新信息来测试我们的预测。该项目将使我们能够测试我们如何准确地预测物种分布的变化，因为它们对气候变化的反应，以及气候，栖息地及其相互作用在解释物种扩展其分布的速度方面的重要性。这一步骤对于确定保护行动是否可以减轻气候变化对生物多样性的影响，以及在使保护适应气候变化的过程中哪些行动最有效至关重要。我们将把我们开发的软件提供给其他科学家、政策制定者和保护工作者，使我们的方法能够应用于保护许多其他面临与银斑船长相同问题的稀有物种。