Bumblebee raw data and corresponding R-Script

This dataset provides all data belonging to the corresponding publication in biology.

Article Abstract:

Climate warming has been observed as the main cause of changes in diversity, community composition and spatial distribution of different species. Due to even stronger warming com-pared to the global mean, bumblebees in alpine ecosystems are particularly exposed to these changes. To investigate the effects of climate warming, we sampled bumblebees along an eleva-tional gradient, compared the records with historical data from 1935/1936, and related our re-sults to climate models. We found that bumblebee community composition differed significant-ly between the two sampling periods and that increasing temperatures in spring were the most plausible factor explaining these range shifts. In addition, species diversity estimates were sig-nificantly lower compared to historical records. The number of socio-parasitic species was sig-nificantly higher in the historical communities, while recent communities showed increases in climate generalists and forest species at lower elevations. Nevertheless, no significant changes in community-weighted means of a species temperature index (STI) or the number of cold-adapted species were detected, likely due to the resolution of the historical data. We conclude that the composition and functionality of bumblebee communities in the study area have been signifi-cantly affected by climate warming, with changes in land use likely playing an additional im-portant role.