Francisco José Cabrero‐Sañudo

Identifying which species are being negatively impacted by climate change and the mechanisms driving their decline is essential to effectively protect biodiversity. Coenonympha pamphilus is a common and generalist butterfly, widely distributed throughout the Western Palearctic, being multivoltine in southern Europe. Previous studies indicate that it will not be substantially affected by climate change; however, it has seemingly disappeared from the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula in the last decades. Here, we aim to determine if it has effectively disappeared from this area, as well as identify the environmental conditions limiting its distribution and the potential causes behind this a priori local extinction. We downloaded all the occurrence records of C. pamphilus and analysed their spatial and temporal trends. To identify the climatic variables driving the distribution of this butterfly in the Iberian Peninsula, we performed an ensemble species distribution model (SDM), combining 600 individual models produced with 6 algorithms. We confirmed that C. pamphilus has not been observed in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula since 2008. Aridity was the main factor limiting the distribution of C. pamphilus in our ensemble SDM, with areas with high aridity being unsuitable for this species. We hypothesise that multivoltinism is the mechanism driving this local extirpation, as high aridity is causing host plants ( Poaceae ) to wither prematurely, precluding the development of the second and/or third generations of the butterfly. Even though generalist species are theoretically more resilient to climate change, other traits such as multivoltinism may increase their vulnerability and need to be further investigated.