Discussion
We tested three hypotheses concerning climate change and alpine insects, by exploring the responses to climate change of four bumblebee species currently inhabiting cold areas of the mountains of southern and central Europe, a part of the world under severe, unprecedented warming and climate change. Here, we explored the environmental features associated with the species distribution, modelled the present distribution to infer future occurrences under realistic climatic conditions, identified the distribution refugia constituting priority areas for conservation and estimated the elevational shift over time.