DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2bvq83bqm
title: Environmental controls on butterfly occurrence and species richness in Israel: The importance of temperature over rainfall

description: Aim Butterflies are considered important indicators representing the state
 of biodiversity and key ecosystem functions, but their use as
 bioindicators requires better understanding of how their observed response
 link to environmental factors. Moreover, better understanding how
 butterfly faunas vary with climate and land cover may be useful to
 estimate the potential impacts of various drivers, including climate
 change, botanical succession, grazing, and afforestation. It is
 particularly important to establish which species of butterflies are
 sensitive to each environmental driver. Location Israel, including the
 West Bank and Golan Heights. Methods To develop a robust and systematic
 approach for identifying how butterfly faunas vary with the environment,
 we analysed the occurrence of 73 species and the abundance of 24 species
 from Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL) data. We used Regional
 Generalised Additive Models to quantify butterfly abundance, and
 generalised linear latent variable models and generalised linear models to
 quantify the impact of temperature, rainfall, soil type, and habitat on
 individual species and on the species community. Results Species richness
 was higher along cooler transects, and also for hilly and mountainous
 transects in the Mediterranean region (rendzina and Terra Rossa soils)
 compared with the coastal plain (Hamra soil) and semi-arid northern Jordan
 Vale (loessial serozem soil). Species occurrence was better explained by
 temperature (negative correlation) than precipitation, while for abundance
 the opposite pattern was found. Soil type and habitat were insignificant
 drivers of occurrence and abundance. Conclusions Butterfly faunas
 responded very strongly to temperature, even when accounting for other
 environmental factors. We expect that some butterfly species will
 disappear from marginal sites with global warming, and a large proportion
 will become rarer as the region becomes increasingly arid.
description: These are summary data from Pollard (1977) transects of the
 Israeli Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS-IL). The species occurrence data
 are taken from transects surveyed for at least 5 years (taking only the
 first five years for transects surveyed for longer). The species abundance
 data are sums of actual and imputed (modeled) counts of 24 easy to
 identify species for 2019. Imputed counts were calculated using Regional
 Generalized Additive Models (Regional GAM; Schmucki et al., 2016) through
 the package rbms version 1.0.0 (Schmucki et al., 2019). For more details,
 see the full text (Comay et al, 2021).
 <strong>References</strong> Comay, O., Ben-Yehuda, O.,
 Schwartz-Tzachor, R., Benyamini, D., Pe'er, I., Ktalav, I. and
 Pe'er G. 2021. Environmental controls on butterfly occurrence and
 species richness in Israel: The importance of temperature over rainfall.
 Ecology and Evolution. Pollard, E. (1977). A method for
 assessing changes in the abundance of butterflies. <i>Biological
 Conservation</i>, 12,<b> </b>115-134. Schmucki, R., Pe’er, G., Roy, D.
 B., Stefanescu, C., Van Swaay, C. A. M., Oliver, T. H. … Julliard, R.
 (2016). Regionally informed abundance index for supporting integrative
 analyses across butterfly monitoring schemes. <i>Journal of Applied
 Ecology</i>, 53, 501-510. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12561 Schmucki R., Harrower C.A., Dennis E.B. (2019) rbms: Computing generalised abundance indices for butterfly monitoring count data. R package version 1.0.0. https://github.com/RetoSchmucki/rbms
description: Table columns:<br> transectCode - a unique identifier for
 the transect. Each transect is divided into 50 meter sections. Note that
 some (but not all) of the transects appear in both tables.<br>
 Site.Name.Heb - The Hebrew name of the transect (in Hebrew
 alphabet).<br> Site.Name.Eng - Latin transcription og the Hebrew
 Name of the transect. Sometimes with English translations, when
 appropriate (e.g. south, west, botanical garden etc.).<br>
 first.monitoring.date - The first date of monitoring at the transect,
 during the relevant period: first 5 years for occurrence data, 2019 for
 abundance data.<br> last.monitoring,date - The last date of
 monitoring at the transect, during the relevant period: first 5 years for
 occurrence data, 2019 for abundance data.<br> no.of.visits - Number
 of monitoring visits at the transects, during the relevant period: first 5
 years for occurrence data, 2019 for abundance data.<br> Grassland,
 Scrubland, Forest and Garden are given as fraction of the entire transect,
 calculated based on the no. of sections of each habitat type (summed up to
 1).<br> Habitat - the dominant habitat(s) type(s) at the
 transect.<br> Community.Heb - The Hebrew name of the volunteer
 community into which the transect belongs (in Hebrew alphabet).<br>
 Community - Latin transcription of the Hebrew name of the volunteer
 community into which the transect belongs. "Independs" are
 transects monitored by volunteers who are not a part of a volunteer
 community.<br> Longitude and Latitude are given in decimal degrees,
 in the WGS84 coordinate reference system, and relate to the
 transects' starting point.<br> mean.annual.temp - Mean annual
 temperature, in degrees Celsius.<br> rainfall - Mean annual
 rainfall, in mm.<br> no.of.sections - Number of
 50-meter-sections.<br> Soil.English - English name of the soil type
 at the transect. Nomenclature follows Singer (2007).<br> Soil.group
 - Higher (coarser) grouping of soil types.<br> scaled.temp - Mean
 annual temperature, scaled and centered.<br> scaled.rain - Mean
 annual rainfall, scaled and centered. The species
 abundance data are sums of actual and imputed (modeled) counts of 24 easy
 to identify species for 2019. Imputed counts were calculated using
 Regional<br> Generalized Additive Models (Regional GAM; Schmucki et
 al., 2016) through the package rbms version 1.0.0 (Schmucki et al.,
 2019).<br> Table columns unique to the abundance table:<br>
 total.abundance - Sum of all species' abundances.<br>
 abund.wo.V.cardui - Sum of all species' abundances, save Vanessa
 cardui (the most abundant species at 2019). The species
 occurrence columns are binary (0 or 1), and indicate whether the species
 was observed in the transect at least once in its first 5 years of
 monitoring.<br> Transects monitored for less then 5 years were
 excluded.<br> Table columns unique to the occurrence
 table:<br> species.richness - Species richness, i.e. the number of
 species observed at the transect during its first 5 years of
 monitoring Rdata files can be read with R and its
 package gllvm (Niku et al., 2019; 2020). Niku, J.,
 Brooks, W., Herliansyah, R., Hui, F. K. C., Taskinen, S. & Warton,
 D. I. (2020). gllvm: Generalized Linear Latent Variable Models. R package
 version 1.2.0.  https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gllvm
 Niku, J., Hui, F. K. C., Taskinen, S. & Warton, D. I.
 (2019). gllvm: Fast analysis of multivariate abundance data with
 generalized linear latent variable models in R. Methods in Ecology and
 Evolution, 10, 2173-2181.
 https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13303 Singer, A.
 (2007). The soils of Israel. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71734-8