Effects of Global Warming on the Distribution and Diversity of Arctic and Subarctic Insects

Anthropogenic climate change is causing the Arctic and Subarctic to warm faster than lower latitudes. Arthropods comprise the majority of animal species and are especially sensitive to abiotic environmental changes. In this chapter we review and discuss impacts of climate change on arthropods, including extinctions and extirpations, population declines, and range shifts. Despite a rapidly growing number of studies on these issues, for arthropods, the size of the problem is such that for most important questions we have only incomplete answers and enormous data gaps remain, particularly in the Arctic and Subarctic.