Distribution Drivers of the Alien Butterfly Geranium Bronze () in an Alpine Protected Area and Indications for an Effective Management.

is the only alien butterfly in Europe. It has recently spread in the Gran Paradiso National Park (GPNP), where it could potentially compete with native geranium-consuming butterflies. Our study aimed to (1) assess the main drivers of its distribution, (2) evaluate the potential species distribution in GPNP and (3) predict different scenarios to understand the impact of climate warming and the effect of possible mitigations.

Changes in Alpine Butterfly Communities during the Last 40 Years.

Our work aims to assess how butterfly communities in the Italian Maritime Alps changed over the past 40 years, in parallel with altitudinal shifts occurring in plant communities. In 2019, we sampled butterflies at 7 grassland sites, between 1300-1900 m, previously investigated in 2009 and 1978, by semi-quantitative linear transects. Fine-scale temperature and precipitation data elaborated by optimal interpolation techniques were used to quantify climate changes.

Earth and field observations underpin metapopulation dynamics in complex landscapes: Near-term study on carabids.

Understanding risks to biodiversity requires predictions of the spatial distribution of species adapting to changing ecosystems and, to that end, Earth observations integrating field surveys prove essential as they provide key numbers for assessing landscape-wide biodiversity scenarios. Here, we develop, and apply to a relevant case study, a method suited to merge Earth/field observations with spatially explicit stochastic metapopulation models to study the near-term ecological dynamics of target species in complex terrains. Our framework incorporates the use of species distribution models for a reasoned estimation of the initial presence of the target species and accounts for imperfect and incomplete detection of the species presence in the study area.