Methods

Study area: Mainland Britain, divided into 10km squares (right)

Time periods: Change in distributionwas measured between two intervals,

Interval 1: 1966-1975 and 1986-1995Interval 2: 1986-1995 and 2001-2010

Taxa selection: 21 taxonomic groups were selected using data from various UK recording schemes. These data were collected together by the Biological Records Centre, based at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Species selection: All taxonomic groups were subject to exclusion criteria, which are shown below in the flow diagram.

WHY should we study distribution shifts in many different taxonomic groups?

BECAUSE Taxonomic groups respond to environmental change in different ways

I am a second year NERC-funded PhD candidate studying the impacts of

climate on distribution change across a wide range of taxonomic groups

Contact me at sazmas@ceh.ac.uk and @SuzannaCMason

Suzanna Mason1,2 , Georgina Palmer2, Simon Gillings3, Jane Hill2, Chris Thomas2 Richard Fox4, Tom Oliver1

Quantifying variation in distribution shifts between taxa in response to climate change

Conclusions and future work

UK species are shifting their distributions in response to environmental change, with the majority of groups shifting northwards. Variation in distribution shift was high between and within taxonomic groups.

Our next step is to investigate how rate of distribution shift varies between the two intervals, and what environmental or biotic factors influence rate of distribution change.

Future hypotheses to test:Is magnitude of range shift significantly correlated with climatic sensitivity?Do generalist species expand more over time than specialist species?

Northern Range Shift

We calculated range shift as the change in species' northern range margin over an interval.

Species' northern range margin calculated as the mean latitude of the 10 most northerly occupied 10km squares

3

4

Introduction

Problem: British species are changing their distributions as the environment is altered by climate change, agriculture,

pollution and urbanisation.

Before distribution change can be explained, it must first be described.

Very little is known, about how different taxa respond to these factors, and how much these

responses vary within and between taxa.

1

Why is this research important?

If we are to conserve species as their environment changes...

...then we need to understand why there is such variation in the

way that species respond to these changes

2

(A) Contains allied species * Shift is significantly different from 0 (one-sample t-test)

Northwards shift

5

12

3 4

Interval 1 (1966-1975

and 1986-1995)

Interval 2 (1986-1995

and 2001-2010)

633km554km

485km

Time period 2 (1986-1995)

Time period 3 (2001-2010)

Time period 1 (1966-1975)

These maps show the distributions and northern range margins, in each time period, of the small skipper butterfly, pictured below

Interval 1 & Interval 2

In total, the data analysed

included:21 groups

910 species18,371,830 records

Species exclusion criteria Remove non-native species

• Non-native species are those that have been added to the GB Non-Native Species Information Portal

• Distribution change of non-natives may not be linked to environmental change.

• Such as the wood duck, pictured above

Remove very common and rare species• Species which were extremely ubiquitous or rare

were removed, as clear distribution changes were unlikely to be observed

• Such as the bordered grey moth, pictured above

Remove upland species• Upland species were defined as those

with a mean altitude >200m across their range

• Upland species are more likely to exhibit altitudinal shifts than latitudinal, in response to climate change.

• Map on the right: 10km squares with a mean altitude of 200m or higher (blue)