title: Extraordinary range expansion in a common bat: the potential roles of climate change and urbanisation.
abstract: Urbanisation and climate change are two global change processes that affect animal distributions, posing critical threats to biodiversity. Due to its versatile ecology and synurbic habits, Kuhl's pipistrelle (Pipistrellus kuhlii) offers a unique opportunity to explore the relative effects of climate change and urbanisation on species distributions. In a climate change scenario, this typically Mediterranean species is expected to expand its range in response to increasing temperatures. We collected 25,132 high-resolution occurrence records from P. kuhlii European range between 1980 and 2013 and modelled the species' distribution with a multi-temporal approach, using three bioclimatic variables and one proxy of urbanisation. Temperature in the coldest quarter of the year was the most important factor predicting the presence of P. kuhlii and showed an increasing trend in the study period; mean annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality were also relevant, but to a lower extent. Although urbanisation increased in recently colonised areas, it had little effect on the species' presence predictability. P. kuhlii expanded its geographical range by about 394 % in the last four decades, a process that can be interpreted as a response to climate change.
authors: Wildlife Research Unit, Laboratorio di Ecologia Applicata, Sezione di Biologia e Protezione dei Sistemi Agrari e Forestali, Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, via Università 100, I-80055, Portici, Napoli, Italy.
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Ancillotto
authors: Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "Charles Darwin", Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Santini
authors: Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.|Centro Ricerca ed Innovazione, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all'Adige, Trento, Italy.
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Ranc
authors: Dipartimento di Biologia e Biotecnologie "Charles Darwin", Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Maiorano
authors: Wildlife Research Unit, Laboratorio di Ecologia Applicata, Sezione di Biologia e Protezione dei Sistemi Agrari e Forestali, Dipartimento di Agraria, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, via Università 100, I-80055, Portici, Napoli, Italy. danrusso@unina.it.|School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. danrusso@unina.it.
authors: D
authors: D
authors: Russo
mesh_terms: D063147:Animal Distribution / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000502:physiology*; D057231:Climate Change; D008954:Models, Biological; D011891:Rain; D012621:Seasons; D013696:Temperature; D014507:Urbanization
keywords: Chiroptera; Distribution; Global change; Model; Pipistrelle