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Climate change represents a threat not only to the existence of individual species, but also to the genetic diversity hidden within them, researchers say. The finding promises to complicate assessments of how climate change will affect biodiversity, as well as conservationists’ task in preserving it.

DNA studies have revealed that traditional species, as defined by taxonomists, contain a vast amount of ‘cryptic’ diversity – such as different lineages, or even species within species. Carsten Nowak, a conservation biologist at the Senckenberg Research Institutes and Natural History Museum in Gelnhausen, Germany, and his colleagues have made a first attempt to understand how global warming might affect this form of diversity. Their findings are published in Nature Climate Change1.

The team looked at aquatic insects living in the mountain streams of central Europe – seven species of caddisfly, a mayfly and a stonefly. The insects were chosen because they are likely to be especially vulnerable to rising temperatures – they need cold water, and have limited ability to travel large distances.