Global threats, local opportunities: ice‐related landforms provide refugia for high‐elevation plants and arthropods

Ice-related landforms in mountain areas have been hypothesized to play a key role in the survival of cold-adapted species threatened by climate change. However, our understanding of such landforms acting as refugia remains speculative. Here we analyse occurrence data, collected through a standardized sampling at 471 sampling points across the European Alps in relation to landform type and other environmental predictors, to identify the drivers of local presence for 209 high-elevation plant and arthropod species. Forty-three species show a negative response to temperature; the occurrence of debris-covered glaciers and rock glaciers weakens the negative relationship with temperature of nine of them (21%). This finding highlights the role of ice-related landforms for the survival of an important fraction of species threatened by climate change, although their role is taxon-related, being maximum for carabid beetles and not observed for spiders. Fine-scale landscape heterogeneity therefore plays a key role in mediating species responses to climate change. By integrating ecological and geographic perspectives, this study provides a framework for identifying refugia and assessing their biodiversity to target conservation measures for mountain areas worldwide.