Authors: Hällfors, Maria; Heikkinen, Risto K.;Kuussaari, Mikko;Lehikoinen, Aleksi;Luoto, Miska;Pöyry, Juha;Saastamoinen, Marjo;Virkkala, Raimo;Kujala, Heini;

A warming climate drives species to move towards the poles and higher elevations. There is, however, large between-species variation in the success of range shifting, highlighting the importance of identifying what characterizes species’ ability to track the changing climate. Ecological traits like size, dispersal propensity, overwintering mode, and habitat use have been theorized to explain these differences. However, such traits only sporadically coincide with range shifts and provide insufficient means for explaining species range shift responses. Recently, the adaptive capacity of species, defined by their plasticity in utilizing environmental space, has been suggested to provide a key for distinguishing between species that are more prone to move versus those that stay and adjust to new conditions. In our study, we related the realized changes in northern range edges of 87 bird, 45 butterfly, and 242 moth species across a 1100-km latitudinal gradient over 20 years to the species thermal niches. We find that species occupying a more narrow thermal niche across their European distribution show stronger shifts towards the north. This result was largely consistent among the species groups and point to similar drivers, which are likely connected to thermal niche mean and breadth as opposed to direct ecological traits.