Climate change: Butterflies take flight in face of extreme weather

These sensitive sentinels have little tolerance for changes to their environment, so when temperatures rise or meadows are mowed to make way for construction, butterflies must take flight in search of more hospitable habitats.

“Butterfly species are shifting their ranges on every continent where they occur,” said Shawan Chowdhury, head of the Global Change Ecology Lab at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and lead author of the study. This trend, Chowdhury and his colleagues say, can be attributed to a combination of factors, but in most cases to climate change, extreme weather and industrial agriculture.