Data for: Recent range shifts of moths, butterflies, and birds are driven by the breadth of their climatic niche

Species are altering their ranges as a response to climate change, but the magnitude and direction of observed range shifts vary considerably among species. The ability to persist in current areas and colonize new areas plays a crucial role in determining which species will thrive and which decline as climate change progresses. Several studies have sought to identify characteristics, such as morphological and life-history traits, that could explain differences in the capability of species to shift their ranges together with a changing climate. These characteristics have explained variation in range shifts only sporadically, thus offering an uncertain tool for discerning responses among species. As long-term selection to past climates have shaped species’ tolerances, metrics describing species’ contemporary climatic niches may provide an alternative means for understanding responses to on-going climate change. Species that occur in a broader range of climatic conditions may hold greater ..., Distribution data
For Lepidoptera, we started off with a selection of 244 moth and 91 butterfly species. These moths and 45 of the butterfly species were selected for a previous study on phenology and range shifts based on the availability of adequate numbers of systematically collected monitoring and trap dates (Hällfors et al., 2021). Although we do not use those moth trap data in this study, we opted for using the same moth species here as in Hällfors et al. (2021) allowing direct comparisons between the studies, and as this set covers the most common and abundantly occurring species in Finland. The lepidopteran species in this study cover almost 80% of the butterfly species ever observed in Finland and circa 27% of moths commonly monitored in Finland. We excluded five butterfly species and one moth species that are migratory and do not have a permanent breeding population in Finland (Pieris rapae, P. brassicae, Vanessa atalanta, V. cardui, Colias hyale, and Autographa gamma), leavin...,