Current climate change is disrupting biotic interactions and eroding
biodiversity worldwide. However, species sensitive to drought, high
temperatures and climate variability might persist in microclimatic
refuges, such as leaf shelters built by arthropods. We conducted a
distributed experiment across an 11,790 km latitudinal gradient to
explore how the importance of leaf shelters for terrestrial arthropods
changes with latitude, elevation and underlying climate. Our analyses
revealed leaf shelters to be key facilitative elements for the diversity
of arthropods. Predator diversity and overall biomass within shelters
increased with local drought and temperature variability, regardless of
latitude and elevation. In contrast, shelter usage by herbivores
increased with abundance of predators on those same plants and in wetter
climates. Projected increase in climatic variability and drought in
certain geographic regions is therefore likely to enhance the importance
of biotic refuges, especially for predators, in mitigating the impact of
climate change on species persistence.