Climate-driven change and conservation of threatened satyrine butterflies in cloud forests of southern Mexico.

Climate change is expected to cause major impacts on the spatial distribution of insects, yet limited analyses are available for assessing the impact of climate change on the distribution of rare Neotropical insects. Oxeoschistus hilara, O. tauropolis, and Viloriodes napaea are narrowly-distributed satyrine butterflies associated to mountain cloud forests in the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot. We investigate the habitat condition and occupancy of the study butterflies at local breeding sites in southern Mexico. We used distribution data to build potential spatial distribution models for the butterflies and host plants (Chusquea spp.), and to examine the potential favorable areas for both the butterfly species and Chusquea hostplants under current and future climate scenarios (RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5). Habitat surveys indicated that the distribution of Chusquea longifolia was a good predictor of the satyrine distributions at the local scale. Climate projections indicated that both temperature and precipitation have a significant impact on the potential distribution areas for the butterflies and their Chusquea spp. hostplants. In both climate change scenarios, we estimated a significant contraction (between 30 and 56% for RCP 2.6, and between 46 and 82% for the RCP 4.5) in suitable climatic area for the study butterfly species. Projected joint distributions of butterfly species and Chusquea hostplants suggested an increasing overlap in potential climatic distributions of 15% for Chusquea spp. and O. tauropolis and of 4% for Chusquea spp. and O. hilara, and a decreasing concordance of 2% for Chusquea spp. and V. napaea, compared to current joint distributions. Implications for conservation: Considering significant reductions of suitable climatic area for the three butterfly species and their hostplants, we suggest that conservation efforts should be implemented in and around the high-suitability climatic areas to reduce population extinction risks. We also suggest reinforcing population-monitoring protocols at key butterfly locations to assess long-term variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]