With that diet, you will go far!

Butterflies and moths expand northwards quickly. But some move faster than others. A new study by Lars Pettersson and collegues, covering 37 years of range expansion in Sweden reveals that diet can play a major role. Specialist species whose larvae feed on nitrogen-favoured plants spread northwards more rapidly. The researchers demonstrate that expansion rates depend in predictable ways on traits such as diet specialization and habitat affinities. This suggests that increased areas of nitrogen-rich habitat, and increased availability of nitrogen-favoured diet, are among the most important drivers of range expansions, potentially having far-reaching consequences for a wide variety of organisms.

The study - With that diet, you will go far: trait-based analysis reveals a link between rapid range expansion and a nitrogen-favoured diet - is published in Proceedings of Royal Society B.