To explore how the importance of leaf shelters for terrestrial arthropods changes with latitude, elevation, and climate, we participated in a globally distributed experiment comparing arthropods in leaf rolls vs. control leaves across 52 sites along an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient. The magnitude of leaf shelter usage by herbivores increased with the abundance of predators and decreased with increasing temperature during the experiment. Taken together, these results highlight that leaf roll use may have both proximal and ultimate causes. We found that projected increases in climate variability and aridity are therefore likely to increase the importance of biotic refugia in mitigating the effects of climate change on species persistence.

1. Romero, G. Q., Gonçalves‐Souza, T., Roslin, T., Marquis, R. J., Marino, N. A., Novotny, V., Mrazova, A., … Sam, K., & Koricheva, J. (2022). Climate variability and aridity modulate the role of leaf shelters for arthropods: a global experiment. Global Change Biology.

We collaborated also on the data-paper accompanying this research:

2. Pereira, C. C., Novais, S., Barbosa, M., Negreiros, D., Gonçalves‐Souza, T., Roslin, T., … Mrazova, A., … Sam, K., … & Cornelissen, T. (2022). Subtle structures with not‐so‐subtle functions: A data set of arthropod constructs and their host plants. Ecology, e3639.