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What started out as a simple hobby of collecting insects from the roof of the Natural History Museum of Denmark ended up transforming into an extensive study of biodiversity and climate change. After 18 years and hundreds of thousands of insects collected, entomologists from the museum found a significant turnover of many species of insects based upon the changes in climate and temperature. With so many species involved in the study, this has provided a rare glimpse at the ways climate change is already impacting biodiversity.
Ole Karsholt and Jan Pederson, both entomologists at the museum in Copenhagen, started collecting insects from the roof of the building in 1992. It was simple curiosity that fueled it initially and kept it going for 18 long years. With such an incredible wealth of data they decided to take a deeper look into their collection to see if it had anything to say. Turns out it did. Quite a bit, in fact.
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As temperature increased over time, the local insect communities responded with a very visible turnover in species of beetles and moths, as more cold-adapted insects were pushed out. And specialists — species that rely on one food source—were hit particularly hard. In a press release, lead author Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate commented that “This trend is theoretically expected, but extremely rare to confirm with observations across this many species.”
Read full, original post: Bugs collected from Copenhagen rooftop document effects of climate change
