Butterfly Conservation (BC) is a UK-wide nonprofit environmentalist organization and charity dedicated to conserving butterflies, moths, and the environment. The charity uses its research to provide advice on how to conserve and restore butterfly and moth habitats and it runs projects to protect more than 100 threatened species of Lepidoptera. Butterfly Conservation is also involved in conserving hundreds of sites and reserves for butterflies and moths throughout the UK.Butterfly Conservation has more than 37,000 members and 31 volunteer-led Branches throughout the UK, as well as the European Butterflies Group. The organisation's Head Office is based in East Lulworth, Dorset, with additional offices in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland..
Projections of biodiversity futures are needed to translate global policies into national action. We use dissimilarity modelling to project climate change scenarios for 1002 plant, 56 butterfly, and 219 bird species across Great Britain up to 2080. Under all scenarios we find extensive community reorganisation, with the disappearance of current bioclimates and emergence of novel ones. We also explore impacts of combined climate and land-use change, finding that even optimistic scenarios could see accumulating extinction debts. Scenarios featuring reduced emissions and a more sustainable society could bend the curve of loss, reducing species heading for extinction by 32% for plants, 14% for butterflies, and 20% for birds. Scenarios differ in impact between groups, with plants showing the most severe responses to environmental change. Overall, we show that actions taken during the next 20 years are crucial to mitigate the worst effects of climate and land-use change for biodiversity in Britain.
Information on the long-term dynamics of species distributions is essential for assessing global biodiversity change and its causes, and for informed conservation decisions. A valuable source of such historical information are atlases. They provide spatial standardisation, extensive geographic coverage, temporal replication, documented sampling protocols, and span multiple species. Here we present model-based occupancy probabilities for 1,055 bird and 58 butterfly species, derived from nine gridded atlas datasets spanning several editions over the past 50 years. These are: Japan, New Zealand, New York state (US), the states of Alberta, Quebec, and The Maritimes (Canada), Czech Republic, United Kingdom, and Europe. Despite standardisation and coordination during data collection, the raw atlas data still contain some variation in sampling effort. We accounted for this using a two-step process: (1) we estimated a proxy for sampling effort in each grid cell within each atlas period using the Frescalo Algorithm, and (2) we ran a Bayesian spatial occupancy model for each species and atlas period, using the estimated sampling effort as the single predictor of detection in the observation process of the model. As the main product, we provide occupancy probabilities for species across grid cells and atlas periods. We also report uncertainty around each probability estimate and flag ~21% (rare) species per atlas for which the model did not fit well. The probability distributions are fit for purpose and served in a user-friendly database with standardised geographic projection, metadata, and taxonomy.
Genetic factors can have a major influence on both short- and long-term success of reintroductions. Genomic monitoring can give a range of insights into the early life of a reintroduced population and ultimately can help to avoid wasting limited conservation resources. In this study, we characterise the genetic diversity of a reintroduced Carterocephalus palaemon (Chequered Skipper butterfly) population in England with respect to the spatial genetic structure and diversity of the source populations in south Belgium. We aim to evaluate the success of the reintroduction, including the effectiveness of the donor sampling strategy, and assess genetic vulnerabilities that may affect the population's future. We also use an isolation-by-distance approach to make quantitative inferences about dispersal, and we explore covariance between host mitochondrial and Wolbachia genomes. We find that, four generations following the initial release, the reintroduced population, founded by 66 wild-caught adults, has an effective size of c. 33, yet has retained similar levels of genomic heterozygosity to those in the source subpopulations in Belgium and shows low levels of inbreeding. However, the restricted number of founders and variance in reproductive success among the surviving families have resulted in a higher level of kinship, likely to result in somewhat higher rates of inbreeding in the future. Furthermore, there is a distinct split between two source landscapes in Belgium, and all genomic evidence suggests that the reintroduced population is descended from only one of these landscapes (called Fagne). We discuss potential causes behind these results, including whether Wolbachia strains are causing genetic incompatibility between clades. We conclude that a conservative strategy for any further translocations would prefer Fagne sites as sources because of the strong evidence of their ability to survive. However, our results warrant further investigation into the reasons for the divergence found in Belgium.
The conservation of biodiversity is a major challenge facing society. In order to design effective conservation strategies, we must be able to identify the areas in which biodiversity is concentrated (i.e., biodiversity hotspots). However, observed patterns of species richness are often heavily biased by sampling effort, undermining the reliability of hotspot detection. Therefore, it is important to understand how the location of identified hotspots varies over time as knowledge about the identity and distribution of species increases. Using what is likely the most comprehensive insect database in the world (the butterflies of Great Britain), we examine the survey effort achieved over time, estimating the degree of congruence in the identification of butterfly biodiversity hotspots at different time intervals. This congruence is low over much of the 215-year period studied, remaining so for hotspots based on a rarity metric even after 1980, when the inventories were already relatively complete. The location of hotspots based on species richness has been more stable in recent decades, reflecting one the more complete sampling coverage in these years. These results highlight the risk of misidentifying biodiversity hotspots based on inadequate data and point to the need for greater sampling effort for insects to improve inventories before identifying and proposing areas for conservation. This study has significant implications for biodiversity conservation, as it provides insights into the usefulness of identifying priority areas based on incomplete inventories, such as those we currently have worldwide.
Since the northerly dispersal of Papilio demoleus Linnaeus from the Gulf States to inland Syria and south-eastern Turkey (Türkiye), progressive, subsequent spread from Mediterranean Turkey into Mediterranean Syria, Lebanon and Israel, also saw the anticipated arrival of this papilionid on the island of Cyprus in autumn 2021. Monitoring since then, involving reports from 248 observers reporting on 783 observations, has revealed the dispersal of P . demoleus throughout much of the island and has shown the species' ability to cope with cool winters and summer temperatures rising to ca 40°C. As has been noted in other eastern Mediterranean countries, P . demoleus has adapted well to urban and peri-urban environments, successfully breeding and nectaring on resources in domestic gardens where the presence of this attractive species has been widely encouraged. Importantly, as this species is considered a pest of Citrus ssp. in some SE Asia countries, there have yet to be any concerning reports of damage from commercial enterprises. We can further state with a reasonable degree of confidence that this species has established a permanent presence in the Mediterranean Basin.
