Data from: Effects of temperature and drought on early life stages in three species of butterflies: mortality of early life stages as a key determinant of vulnerability to climate change?

Anthropogenic climate change poses substantial challenges to biodiversity conservation. Well-documented responses include phenological and range shifts, and declines in cold but increases in warm-adapted species. Thus, some species will suffer while others will benefit from ongoing change, although the biological features determining the prospects of a given species under climate change are largely unknown. By comparing three related butterfly species of different vulnerability to climate change, we show that stress tolerance during early development may be of key importance. The arguably most vulnerable species showed the strongest decline in egg hatching success under heat and desiccation stress, and similar pattern also for hatchling mortality. Research, especially on insects, is often focussed on the adult stage only. Thus, collating more data on stress tolerance in different life stages will be of crucial importance for enhancing our abilities to predict the fate of particular species and populations under ongoing climate change.

人为气候变化正对生物多样性保护构成严峻挑战。已有充分实证记录的响应包括物候偏移与分布范围变迁，以及耐寒物种种群衰减、适应温暖环境的物种种群扩张。据此，部分物种将在持续的气候变化中蒙受生存压力，而另一些物种则可从中获益，但目前学界对决定特定物种在气候变化下生存前景的生物学特征仍知之甚少。本研究通过对比三种对气候变化脆弱性存在差异的近缘蝴蝶物种，证实早期发育阶段的胁迫耐受能力或为关键影响因子。其中，被广泛认为最为脆弱的物种，在热胁迫与干旱胁迫下的卵孵化成功率下降幅度最为显著，初孵幼体死亡率也呈现出相同的变化趋势。当前相关研究（尤其是昆虫类研究）往往仅聚焦于成虫阶段，因此，整合不同生命阶段的胁迫耐受相关数据，对于提升我们预测特定物种及种群在持续气候变化下的存续命运的能力，具有至关重要的意义。