Monarch butterfly on the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota
Chris Frost/Shutterstock
As the climate warms, species of butterflies with larger wingspans are expanding their range in high-latitude regions of North America, while smaller butterflies and those adapted to cold conditions are trending downward.
Vaughan Shirley of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and colleagues built a computational model to analyze data on 90 butterfly species from 1970 to 2019 above 45 degrees north latitude in North America.
The research team analyzed how the monthly minimum temperatures have changed over the past 50 years.
