British Lepidoptera are reducing alarmingly: exactly 72% of species

Community and Forum → Blog → British Lepidoptera are reducing alarmingly: exactly 72% of species

Lev Bely, 24.01.2012 17:51

According to a survey made by Butterfly Conservation and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) nearly three-quarters of all UK butterflies and moths have shown its reducing over the last decade when even rather common Lepidoptera have depopulated by 24%.

The survey results show that the most reducing species are The Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne), The Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) and The High Brown Fritillary (Fabriciana adippe) which has depopulated by 69%.

Albeit there are rarest species in this list which tend to vanish first because of special conditions they need to reproduce themselves properly and thus survive, others even less picky also keep on reducing such as The Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris), The Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) and even The Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae).

Richard Fox, Butterfly Conservation surveys manager, says that the depopulating of the rarest butterflies is surely a problem to solve. But the more alarming fact is that those butterflies are vanishing which got well adapted in the past and felt good in these lands before humans came and began changing butterflies' habitats.

The survey also tells of a visible success in saving and multiplying of the rarest species. Amongst them is The Large Blue (Maculinea arion) which was revived in the 1980s after it had disappeared as a species. The key solution was a discovering of a clear interaction between this butterfly's caterpillars and some of ant species.

The list of reducing species also includes The Marsh Fritillary (Euphydryas aurinia) and The Small Blue (Cupido minimus).

"We've got a good understanding of the ecology and how to look after the habitat for these species. What we really need to do now is to expand this UK wide and look at this more broadly."

BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

Reader's Digest UK, Wildlife Monthly: July, of the UK species decline: