Declines in European bumblebee habitat suitability attributable to climate change
(2026) Nature Climate Change — (2026)
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- Authors
De Tandt, Bastien 
Serres, Kyla Pietroiusti, Rosa Erazo, Diana Dellicour, Simon
- Abstract
- Climate change is increasingly implicated in the decline of insect pollinator populations, which provide critical ecosystem services. Isolating its contribution from other co-occurring environmental stresses remains challenging yet crucial for informing conservation strategies and mitigating biodiversity losses. Here we compare predictions of ecologically suitable areas for European bumblebee species from 1901 to 2019 under factual and counterfactual scenarios to evaluate whether climate change has led to a loss of suitable habitat. Community-level ecological suitability was reduced by climate change across Europe by 5% on average and up to 19% locally, with pronounced declines in southern and lowland central regions. By contrast, in the Alpine and Boreal regions, habitat suitability gains at higher altitudes partially offset losses at lower latitudes and altitudes, resulting in minimal net changes. Our results demonstrate that climate change is reshaping the ecologically suitable areas for these key pollinators and represents a pervasive pressure on European wildlife. Global biodiversity loss is occurring at an unprecedented pace, with over one-fifth of all assessed plant and animal species now threatened by extinction 1. This crisis stems from multiple, often interacting anthropo-genic drivers, including habitat loss, overexploitation, pollution, inva-sive species and climate change 2. As human pressure on ecosystems is set to continue, climate change is expected to become a dominant driver of biodiversity loss 3-6. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, global mean surface temperatures have increased by over 1.2 °C (ref. 7) and are projected to rise by between 1.5 °C and 4.0 °C by 2100, depending on future greenhouse gas emission scenarios 8. Beyond global warming , climate change alters precipitation regimes and increases both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, wildfires and heat waves 8-11. These changes are reshaping biological communities by altering species distribution, abundance and diversity, raising global concerns about ecosystem resilience and human well-being 12,13. Insects, critical providers of many ecosystem services , such as pest control and pollination 14 , are expected to be rapidly impacted by climate change, given the sensitive thermal physiology and short life cycle of many species 15. Regional studies have highlighted alarming rates of decline, with a decrease of flying insect biomass of 76% over 27 years in Germany's protected areas 16. At a broader scale, authors have suggested that up to 40% of insect species could become extinct within the coming decades 17. The decline of insect pollinator populations stands out given that almost 90% of wild plants and ~70% of major world-cultivated crops rely on animal pollination 18,19. Yet, despite increasing research on the impact of climate change on wildlife, few studies have formally attributed observed biodiversity declines to climate change or quantified its contribution relative to other drivers.
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Citations
De Tandt, B., Serres, K., Pietroiusti, R., Erazo, D., Massonnet, F., Michez, D., Thiery, W., Ghisbain, G., & Dellicour, S. (2026). Declines in European bumblebee habitat suitability attributable to climate change. Nature Climate Change. Submitted. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02734-6 (Original work published 2026)