These may operate during the adult season, such as heat waves affecting adult survival, but also in the cold season, such as decreasing snow amount resulting in worse insulation of overwintering stages, or temporary snowmelts causing, e.g., diapause disruptions and subsequent mortality. Due to warming climate, cold-adapted species may be impaired by habitat changes, such as ascending timberline in species dependent on open grassland conditions, or by direct climatic effects. The recent debates on the effects of warming climate on biotic communities raise interest in the cold-adapted insects inhabiting narrow cold-climate zones, such as those in high mountains. Species of mountains or steppes tend to be freeze-avoidant, overwinter as young larvae, and contain high concentrations of trehalose, while those of mesic environments tend to be freeze-tolerant, overwinter as later instars, and rely on compounds such as maltose, saccharose, and fructose. SCP, TSPC, and glycerol concentrations were affected by phylogeny. ![]() gardetta contained high ribitol and trehalose lowland species contained high saccharose, maltose, fructose, and sorbitol. contained high trehalose, threitol, and erythritol C. Total sugar and polyol concentrations (TSPC) varied sixfold (2 to 12 μg × mg −1) and eightfold including the Erebia spp. SCP varied from −22 to −9 ☌ among species. gardetta, and Melanargia galathea died prior to freezing Maniola jurtina, Chazara briseis, and Minois dryas displayed a mixed response. Aphantopus hyperantus and Hipparchia semele survived freezing of body fluids Coenonympha arcania, C. We assessed Autumn and Winter supercooling points (SCPs) and concentrations of putatively cryoprotective sugars and polyols via gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. We expanded our investigation to eight Satyrinae species of seven genera. ![]() Studies on Erebia, a species-rich cold-zone butterfly genus, detected unexpected diversity of cold hardiness traits. The cold hardiness of overwintering stages affects the distribution of temperate and cold-zone insects. We show that cold hardiness strategies are indeed diverse in the group and that high mountain and continental steppe species employ similar cryoprotection mechanisms, differing from those employed by species of more mesic environments. Asking whether this diversity is peculiar to this genus, or may be common in the Satyrinae clade, we investigated supercooling ability, contents of sugars and polyols in overwintering larvae tissues, and evolutionary signal of these traits of eight European Satyrinae species (from seven genera) and compared them with the Erebia representatives investigated earlier. ![]() Our previous work on the genus Erebia, a cold-adapted and species-rich group of the sub-family Satyrinae (Nymphalidae), disclosed unexpected diversity of cold hardiness strategies, with closely related species surviving or not surviving freezing of larval body fluids. In insects distributed in temperate and cold zones, cold hardiness during overwintering crucially affects the distribution, including range shifts due to climate change.
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