Abstract
Climate change is forcing species to migrate to cooler temperatures at higher elevations, yet many taxa are dispersing slower than necessary. One yet-to-be-tested explanation for inadequate migration rates is that high-elevation environments pose physiological barriers to dispersal, particularly in species with high metabolic demands. By synthesizing across >800 species, we find evidence for metabolic constraints: upslope migration is slower in insects that rely on nature’s most expensive locomotor strategy—flight.
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Data availability
Data underlying this study can be accessed through the Dryad Digital Repository at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932bs (ref. 32).
Code availability
Code underlying this can be accessed through the Dryad Digital Repository at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kh18932bs (ref. 32).
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Acknowledgements
Support was generously provided by the University of Colorado Denver (to M.P.M. and J.S.) and Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology (to J.T.S.). Conversations with J. de Mayo, J. Grady and A. Lenard and input from three reviewers improved this study.
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M.P.M. designed the study. J.S. and M.P.M. collected the data. M.P.M. and J.T.S. analysed the data. M.P.M. and J.T.S. wrote the paper.
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Nature Climate Change thanks Dean Jacobsen, Lourenço Martins and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Moore, M.P., Shaich, J. & Stroud, J.T. Upslope migration is slower in insects that depend on metabolically demanding flight. Nat. Clim. Chang. 13, 1063–1066 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01794-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-023-01794-2
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