North-westward range expansion of the bumblebee <i>Bombus haematurus</i> into Central Europe is associated with warmer winters and niche conservatism
Journal: bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Year: 2020

Abstract Range expansions of naturally spreading species are crucial for understanding how species interact with the environment and build their niche. Here, we studied the bumblebee Bombus haematurus Kriechbaumer, 1870, a species historically distributed in the eastern Mediterranean area which has very recently started expanding northwards into Central Europe. After updating the global distribution of this species, we investigated if niche shifts took place during this range expansion between c