CLIMIT: CLimate change impacts on Insects and their MITigation

昆虫对环境变化反应迅速：例如，近几十年来，欧洲蝴蝶的区域灭绝速度超过了鸟类和高等植物的数量级。我们还表明，蝴蝶是不太显眼的无脊椎动物群体变化的准确指标，包括对环境中所有其他物种产生重大影响的蚂蚁等占主导地位的昆虫。在这里，我们建议衡量人类引起的气候和栖息地变化的综合影响（面积，隔离，斑块质量）对一些欧洲最专业和最受威胁的草原昆虫，与蚂蚁互动（“myrmecophiles”，如阿多尼斯，粉笔山，银镶嵌和5种大型蓝色蝴蝶，和两个hoverflies其年轻阶段生活在蚁巢内2年），通过研究他们的当地适应，从地中海到北海/波罗的海，当地气候梯度不断变化的生态位和不同的需求。我们将模拟限制每个系统（Meta）人口的过程，并预测不同地区未来土地利用，气候和社会经济变化的影响。我们将根据数学模型做出新的预测，关于如何减轻生物多样性变化的多种驱动因素的有害影响，我们将使用现有和新的自然保护区和其他保护区的大规模实验来测试我们的建议，这些保护区和其他保护区的土壤深度，地形和放牧管理已经改变，以创建我们目前对大蓝蝶和其他蝴蝶最佳栖息地的定义，以及它们赖以生存的蚂蚁最后，我们将得出关于嗜蚁昆虫需求变化的一般性结论，全球可能有10万种，包括不成比例的红皮书物种和非嗜蚁蝴蝶，在后一种情况下，通过将我们的模型预测与所有（英国）或代表性物种的记录变化模式进行比较，（欧洲）物种跨越气候梯度，使用自1976年以来所有英国蝴蝶种群规模年度变化的生态与水文中心数据集，以及该联盟可用的其他国家和欧洲数据集。关于这一广泛提案的详细假设和目标的摘要可在关于自愿退休的主要提案中找到，并在本表格目标下的简短版本中找到。

Insects react rapidly to environmental change: for example, regional extinction rates of European butterflies have exceeded those of birds and higher plants by an order of magnitude in recent decades. We have also shown that butterflies are accurate indicators of change in less conspicuous invertebrate groups, including dominant insects such as ants that have major impacts on all other species in their environment. Here we propose to measure the combined impacts of human-induced changes in climate and habitat (area, isolation, patch quality) on some of Europe's most specialised and threatened grassland insects that interact with ants ('myrmecophiles' such as Adonis, Chalkhill, Silver-studded and 5 species of Large Blue butterflies, and two hoverflies whose young stages live 2 years inside ant nests), by studying their local adaptations, changing niches and different needs across a gradient of local climates from the Mediterranean to the North/Baltic seas. We will model the processes that limit each system's (meta-)populations, and predict the impacts of future scenarios of land-use, climate and socio-economic change in different regions. We will make new predictions, based on mathematical models, about how to mitigate the harmful impacts of multiple drivers of biodiversity change, and we will test our recommendations using existing and new large scale experiments of nature reserves and other conservation sites where the soil depth, topography and grazing management have been altered to create our current definitions of the optimum habitat for the Large blue and other butterflies, and the ants on which they depend. Finally, we will draw general conclusions about the changing needs of myrmecophiles, of which perhaps 100,000 species exist globally, including a disproportionate number of Red Book species, and of non myrmecophilous butterflies, in the latter case through comparing our model predictions with patterns of recorded change in all (UK) or representative (European) species across the climatic gradient, using the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology's dataset of annual changes in all UK butterfly population sizes since 1976, and other national and European datasets available to the consortium. A summary of the detailed hypotheses and objectives of this extensive proposal can be found in the main proposal on VR and in a shorter version under objectives on this form.