A monarch butterfly on the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota
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Larger-winged butterfly species have expanded their range in parts of North America at high latitudes as the climate has warmed, while smaller butterflies and species adapted to cold conditions tend to decline.
Vaughan Shirey at Georgetown University in Washington DC and colleagues built a computer model to analyze data on the presence of 90 butterfly species above latitude 45°N in North America from 1970 to 2019.
The team analyzed how shifting monthly minimum temperatures over the past 50…