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BOOK REVIEW
J. Settele, O. Kudrna, A. Harpke, I. Ku
¨hn, C. van Swaay,
R. Verovnik, M. Warren, M. Wiemers, J. Hanspach, T. Hickler,
E. Ku
¨hn, I. van Halder, K. Veling, A. Vliegenthart, I. Wynhoff
and O. Schweiger: Climatic Risk Atlas of European Butterflies
Pensoft, Sofia-Moscow, 2008, Paperback, ISBN 978-954-642-454-9, €59.00,
ISBN 978-954-642-455-6, €89.00, 710 pp
Robert J. Wilson
Published online: 2 April 2010
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
There has been increasing recognition over the past decade
that climate change represents a real threat to biodiversity.
Butterflies are the insect group with the best historical
information on distributions, and have already shown clear
evidence of range shifts consistent with the effects of cli-
mate warming. Relatively comprehensive distribution data
for European butterflies, collected by a multitude of pro-
fessional and amateur entomologists and compiled as an
atlas by Otakar Kudrna, has now permitted the production
by Josef Settele and colleagues of this Climatic Risk Atlas,
an ambitious venture modelling the effects of climate
change on 294 European butterfly species.
The aims of the Atlas are set out in the Foreword: to
provide a visual aid to communicate climate change risks
for biodiversity; to present information that could help
prioritise conservation for a large taxonomic group; and to
reach a broad audience for scientific predictions of climate
change impacts on biodiversity. For the most part, the Atlas
accomplishes these goals.
The book opens with a largely concise introductory sec-
tion, briefly noting the role of butterflies as an indicator taxon
before detailing the methods employed for the work. The
Atlas is one output of a multidisciplinary European Union
project (‘‘ALARM—Assessing LArge-scale environmental
Risks for biodiversity with tested Methods’’), and this sec-
tion provides some background to the policy and climate
change scenarios used, an introduction to Biodiversity Risk
Assessment, and the methodology used to model the climatic
niches of European butterflies. There is a slight tendency in
these sections to lapse into subject-specific terminology from
the social and ecological sciences, but generally the authors
do a fairly good job of providing enough but not too much
information on how the research was conducted. The same
can be said of an instructive explanation of the taxonomic
nomenclature used, which prefaces the species descriptions
and maps: be prepared for some unfamiliar species and genus
names in places.
The main part of the Atlas models the future distribu-
tions of favourable climates for 294 of the approximately
450 European butterfly species, under three different cli-
mate scenarios, representing increases of 2.4C, 3.1C, or
4.1C by 2080. This section is well-presented, and the
results are fascinating and not a little alarming.
Although the book is not an identification guide, the
double page spread for each species features an excellent
photograph taken in a natural setting, as well as a natural
history description including information on larval host
plants and life history. One map is provided showing the
observed species distribution in 50 km UTM grid cells, and
the climate model fitted to this distribution. A 16-panel
niche diagram shows the effects of annual temperature
range, growing season, annual precipitation range and soil
water content on the probability of occurrence of each
species: these figures take some getting used to, and are not
helped by an unfortunate typographical error where ‘‘hos-
tile’’ has replaced ‘‘habitable’’ for all species. Future
modelled distributions of the climatic niche are presented
for 2050 and 2080 for the three climate scenarios, and
predicted changes to the size of these distributions are
summarised in a Table, assuming either that the species is
able to fully colonise future climate space (Full Dispersal),
or only able to survive in locations which overlap with its
current range (No Dispersal). The textual description of the
results limits itself to describing how effective the climate
variables are at describing the current species distribution
R. J. Wilson (&)
Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter,
Cornwall Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ, UK
e-mail: R.J.Wilson@exeter.ac.uk
123
J Insect Conserv (2010) 14:423–424
DOI 10.1007/s10841-010-9292-4
(quantified using AUC), and then providing an assessment
of climate risk category based on the worst case scenario of
distribution decline by 2080 under the No Dispersal
assumption. For species whose distributions are modelled
relatively well by climate variables, the risk categories
range from Lower Risk (\50% of currently suitable grid
cells may be unsuitable in 2080) to Extremely High Risk
([95% of grid cells no longer suitable).
The emphasis here is on the species distributions, and
for this point alone the Atlas is a valuable complement to
other guides for European butterflies. Given that species
distribution records are seldom complete for entire ranges,
it is tempting to ask whether the current climatic niche
models are sometimes better representations of species
distributions than the available records, and to use this kind
of information to target recording in poorly studied parts of
the ranges of threatened species. In other cases, the models
clearly over- or under-estimate the potential distributions
of species, or omit parts of distributions. The authors
acknowledge such cases, and where there is a relatively
low fit of the observed distribution to the climate variables
(quantified by an AUC of \0.75) the Atlas takes the cau-
tionary approach of categorising only a Potential Climate
Change Risk for the species concerned.
Readers are largely left to draw their own conclusions
about whether certain species types, or the biota of certain
regions, are disproportionately threatened, but careful
inspection of the species pages identifies some common-
alities among modelled responses. Several Arctic species
are predicted to be at Very or Extremely High Risk; some
Balkan species are highly threatened; some, but not all,
mountain species are threatened. I lost count of the number
of western Mediterranean species whose climatic niche is
expected to shift towards the shores of north west Europe,
signifying a drastic reduction in distribution size if colo-
nisation is not possible because of dispersal limitations or a
lack of habitat (as will be the case for species such as
Zerynthia rumina and Charaxes jasius which have largely
Mediterranean larval host plants). In fact it is difficult to
tell whether such species will be able to survive increas-
ingly hot and dry conditions in southern Europe, because
the distribution and climate data used for the models are
limited by the Mediterranean coast of Europe: but again the
authors acknowledge this potential limitation.
It is not always the case that climate risk will have been
over-estimated by the models: in some cases, the realistic
area of overlap between future and current distributions
may be less than that estimated because some parts of the
current modelled niche are far distant from the species
distribution. Furthermore, favourable climates for many
widespread species are predicted to retract towards north-
western Europe: even if modelled climate space is not
expected to show the greatest declines for these species,
their ability to persist may be severely threatened by the
very high intensity of human land-use in this part of the
continent.
Climate niche modelling was not conducted for about 150
species with very restricted distributions. These species and
their distributions are listed after the main species descrip-
tions, with the cautionary note that most would be expected
to be at Extremely High Risk from climate change, because
of the strong likelihood that future favourable climates
would not overlap their current distributions.
A set of methodological limitations and provisos at the
end of the Atlas is helpful. Much concern has recently been
expressed in the scientific literature about the reliability of
bioclimate envelope models, and the predictions of future
climate space need to be treated with some caution.
However, I agree with the authors’ assertion that ‘‘It is
better to achieve some limited knowledge …than to
remain in complete ignorance’’. The possible applications
of this knowledge for butterfly conservation are described
in a brief closing section, which emphasises the roles of
large populations in diverse habitats, and enhanced but-
terfly mobility across landscapes. Martin Warren’s Fore-
word on behalf of Butterfly Conservation Europe calls for a
shift in Common Agricultural Policy spending, funding for
High Nature Value Farming, and protection and manage-
ment of Natura 2000 sites across Europe as means to
achieve these goals for conservation.
There are a number of typographic and other errors in the
Atlas, probably resulting from the extremely rapid publica-
tion process noted in the Acknowledgements. Notable
among these errors are the incorrect future niche maps for
Zizeeria knysna, an incorrect photograph for Hipparchia
syriaca, an incorrect niche diagram for Colias palaeno, and
incorrect data in some tables at the end of the Atlas. A
detailed set of corrigenda is available (Settele et al. 2009). In
my view, the Atlas is an attractive and thought-provoking
publication which goes a long way to accomplishing its
sensible aims. Admirably, the entire work is available free-
of-charge as a pdf from http://pensoftonline.net/biorisk/
index.php/journal/article/view/3/9, but for those who can
afford the price I would recommend the book.
Reference
Settele J, Kudrna O, Harpke A, Ku
¨hn I, van Swaay C, Verovnik R,
Warren M, Wiemers M, Hanspach J, Hickler T, Ku
¨hn E, van
Halder I, Veling K, Vliegenthart A, Wynhoff I, Schweiger O
(2009) Corrigenda: Settele J et al. (2008) Climatic risk atlas of
European butterflies. BioRisk 2:33–72
424 J Insect Conserv (2010) 14:423–424
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