1st European Congress on Odonatology Programme and abstracts

The impact of climate change on two boreo-alpine dragonfly
species, Somatochlora alpestris and S. arctica, at the edge of
their range
Geert De Knijf 1 , Ulrich Flenker ², Cédric Vanappelghem 3 , Cosmin O Manci 4 &
Vincent J. Kalkman 5
1 Research Institute for Nature and Forest, Kliniekstraat 25, B-1070 Brussels Belgium, geert.deknijf@inbo.be
2
German Sport University Cologne, Institute of Biochemistry, Cologne Germany, u.flenker@biochem.dshs-koeln.de
3
rue de Bailleul 34, F-62580 Vimy France, cedvana@free.fr
4
Babes-Bolyai University, Faculty of Biology and Geology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, cosminovidiu@yahoo.com
5
<strong>European</strong> Invertebrate Survey, Naturalis - National Museum of Natural History
PO-box 9517, NL-2300 RA Leiden the Netherlands, kalkman@naturalis.nl
It is expected that climate change will have a great impact on many species and habitats. This will be
greater if populations are found at the edge of their range or are isolated and this can lead to regional
extinction. Here we investigate the possible impact on two boreo-alpine dragonfly species,
Somatochlora alpestris and S. arctica at their range margins. Both species were unknown for most
parts of South-eastern Europe. In 2007 we found 15 localities for S. alpestris and two for S. arctica in
the Carpathian mountains of Romania. This resulted in a distributional range extension of 500 km
towards southeast. Both species are confined to mountain peat bogs in Romania. All localities are
situated between 1300 m and 2100 m altitude, where the central 50% are restricted to a small range
between 1600 m and 1800 m. Based on the factor altitude we predict a hypothetical distribution map
for S. alpestris. In addition, we modelled the impact of climate change for two scenarios: a 1.5°C
temperature increase and a 3°C increase. The first resulted in an altitudinal range shifts of +200 m
and in a distributional shrinkage of 40%, the latter corresponds to an upward range shift of 600 m.
Habitat specialists, especially those at their margins of distribution are hardly able to keep pace with
climate change. It seems unlikely that mountain peat bogs will develop at rates comparable to those
of climate change. This will inevitably result in regional extinctions of boreo-alpine species.
11