Temporal variation of species distribution and species morphological traits along altitude in the Alps

Many species have shown recent shifts in their distribution in response to environmental changes, in particular to climate change, mostly moving towards higher latitudes and/or altitudes. In this framework, it’s crucial to determine temporal variation in species occurrence or abundance along altitudinal gradients in order to detect changes in altitudinal shifts and to assess sensitivity of mountain species to land use and climate change. The main purpose of the research was to detect temporal changes in species distribution along altitudinal gradients in the Alps at different levels of ecological organization. The Phd thesis is divided into four different chapters: 1) Detecting range altitudinal shifts of mountain birds in time: a comparison between two alpine areas, 2) To shift or not to shift? The role of climate and land-use changes in shaping the altitudinal distribution of birds in time, 3) Multi taxa distribution along altitude: 5 years data from the Western Alps, 4) Morphometric variation of ground beetles along an altitudinal gradient. For the first study we investigated how birds species distributions changed in time between two different alpine areas. The second chapter focused on understanding which was the major driver between land cover and temperature changes in determining birds altitudinal shifts. The third part was based on a multi taxa approach in order to detect and compare temporal changes in species elevational distribution of three faunistic groups: ground beetles, butterflies and birds. The aim of the last chapter consisted in detecting changes of 11 morphometric variables of 5 ground beetles species along an altitudinal gradient starting from 1200 m to 2700 m asl.