Warmer Urban Areas Lead to Later – Not Earlier – Emergence of Butterflies
Tyson Wepprich, a Ph.D. student at NC State and a Global Change Fellow at the SE Climate Science Center along with an international team of researchers has found that a subset of common butterfly species are emerging days or weeks later than usual in warmer urban areas than in nearby, comparatively cooler rural areas, raising questions about how the insects may respond to significant future increases in temperature. The paper, “Unexpected phenological responses of butterflies to the interaction of urbanization and geographic temperature,” is published online in the journal Ecology. “We know that butterflies emerge earlier in North Carolina than they do in New England, because it’s warmer,” says Wepprich. “We also know that cities are heat sinks that are warmer than outlying areas. So we wanted to see whether butterflies would emerge earlier in cities than they do in more rural environments.”
For news release:http://news.ncsu.edu/