Weather and butterfly responses: a framework for understanding population dynamics in terms of species' life-cycles and extreme climatic events.

Understanding population responses to environmental conditions is key in the current context of climate change and the extreme climatic events that are threatening biodiversity in an unprecedented way. In this work, we provide a framework for understanding butterfly population responses to weather and extreme climatic seasons by taking into account topographic heterogeneity, species' life-cycles and density-dependent processes. We used a citizen-science database of Mediterranean butterflies that contains long-term population data (28 years) on 78 butterfly species from 146 sites in the Mediterranean mesic and alpine climate regions.

Larval parasitism in a specialist herbivore is explained by phenological synchrony and host plant availability.

Parasitism is a key factor in the population dynamics of many herbivorous insects, although its impact on host populations varies widely, for instance, along latitudinal and altitudinal gradients. Understanding the sources of geographical variation in host-parasitoid interactions is crucial for reliably predicting the future success of the interacting species under a context of global change. Here, we examine larval parasitism in the butterfly Aglais urticae in south-west Europe, where it is a mountain specialist.

Contrasting impacts of precipitation on Mediterranean birds and butterflies.

The climatic preferences of the species determine to a large extent their response to climate change. Temperature preferences have been shown to play a key role in driving trends in animal populations. However, the relative importance of temperature and precipitation preferences is still poorly understood, particularly in systems where ecological processes are strongly constrained by the amount and timing of rainfall.

Global biodiversity, stoichiometry and ecosystem function responses to human-induced C-N-P imbalances.

Global change analyses usually consider biodiversity as a global asset that needs to be preserved. Biodiversity is frequently analysed mainly as a response variable affected by diverse environmental drivers. However, recent studies highlight that gradients of biodiversity are associated with gradual changes in the distribution of key dominant functional groups characterized by distinctive traits and stoichiometry, which in turn often define the rates of ecosystem processes and nutrient cycling.