《Nature Climate Change》杂志今天发表英国科学家的一篇研究报告，气候变化可能导致英国蝴蝶种类的较少。研究人员说，由于极端干旱变得越来越频繁，英国当地蝴蝶很有可能会灭绝，甚至最乐观的气候变化情景也显示出蝴蝶正在灭绝。
 

研究者发现包括现在常见的斑点木蝶在内对的六种蝴蝶对干旱特别敏感。如果碳排放继续按目前的路径，一些物种可能会在2050年灭绝。到2100年英国的蝴蝶将会大范围灭绝。
 

科学家已经知道，气候变化对蝴蝶造成的不利影响。为了应对气候变暖一些物种已经改变了他们的地理范围，并有一些研究表明，全球变暖可能会影响黑脉金斑蝶的迁徙时间。但直到最近，研究人员并没有真正看到因为持续干旱和蝴蝶栖息地的斑片状和蔓延对这些昆虫造成的影响。这项研究表明人类改变昆虫栖息地可能会加剧全球变暖的影响，意义至关重要。
 

毛虫有可能受气候变化影响最大的。当这些毛虫在吃完干的植物后，这些幼虫蝴蝶要么死亡要么生长得很慢。这意味着气候变化可能消灭整个昆虫种群。因为蝴蝶栖息地的日益减少和人类对土地的利用，其他蝴蝶再繁殖面积有所减少。“严重的热浪会直接影响成虫，但蝴蝶在幼虫时对干旱更敏感。”奥利弗说。
 

“这项研究也有局限性。”赫尔曼说它只使用了一次干旱的数据，研究人员还指出，他们没有能够解决的可能性，蝴蝶可能会适应日益频繁的干旱。然而，他们并不太在意这一点，因为那些物种对干旱敏感的适应能力赶不上气候变化的速度。
 

研究人员认为，英国应该努力恢复蝴蝶栖息地，减少碳排放，以防止这些昆虫的损失。奥利弗说“因为我们已经深受气候变暖的影响，栖息地的恢复对许多野生动物保护区至关重要，即使温室气体的排放量明显减少。”
 

原文链接：
 

Interacting effects of climate change and habitat fragmentation on drought-sensitive butterflies
 

原文摘要：
 

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency of some climatic extremes. These may have drastic impacts on biodiversity, particularly if meteorological thresholds are crossed, leading to population collapses. Should this occur repeatedly, populations may be unable to recover, resulting in local extinctions. Comprehensive time series data on butterflies in Great Britain provide a rare opportunity to quantify population responses to both past severe drought and the interaction with habitat area and fragmentation. Here, we combine this knowledge with future projections from multiple climate models, for different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and for simultaneous modelled responses to different landscape characteristics. Under RCP8.5, which is associated with ‘business as usual’ emissions, widespread drought-sensitive butterfly population extinctions could occur as early as 2050. However, by managing landscapes and particularly reducing habitat fragmentation, the probability of persistence until mid-century improves from around zero to between 6 and 42% (95% confidence interval). Achieving persistence with a greater than 50% chance and right through to 2100 is possible only under both low climate change (RCP2.6) and semi-natural habitat restoration. Our data show that, for these drought-sensitive butterflies, persistence is achieved more effectively by restoring semi-natural landscapes to reduce fragmentation, rather than simply focusing on increasing habitat area, but this will only be successful in combination with substantial emission reductions.