Thermal sensitivity of UK butterflies in space versus time

预测物种如何应对气候变化是当今生态学家面临的主要挑战之一。预测未来物种分布的一种非常常见的方法是基于这样的假设，即气候变量与在空间上估计的丰度之间的关系随着气候的变化而随时间转移。这种假设很少得到验证。来自英国蝴蝶监测（UKBMS）计划的特殊长期种群数据提供了一个难得的机会来测试温度-丰度关系的空间-时间可转移性的关键假设。

Predicting how species will respond to climate change is one of the major challenges that today's ecologists are faced with. A very common approach for projecting a species distribution into the future rests on the assumption that the relationships between climatic variables and abundance estimated across space are transferable over time as climate changes. This assumption has rarely been tested. The exceptional long-term population data arising from the UK butterfly monitoring (UKBMS) scheme provides a rare opportunity to test the pivotal assumption of space for time transferability of the temperature-abundance relationship.