Butterfly monitoring in Europe: methods, applications and perspectives

By C. V. van Swaay, P. Nowicki, Josef Settele, A. Strien. Biodiversity and Conservation, 2008

287 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since the first Butterfly Monitoring Scheme in the UK started in the mid-1970s, butterfly monitoring in Europe has developed in more than ten European countries. These schemes are aimed to assess regional and national trends in butterfly abundance per species. We discuss strengths and weaknesses of methods used in these schemes and give examples of applications of the data. A new development is to establish supra-national trends per species and multispecies indicators. Such indicators enable to report against the target to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. Our preliminary European Grassland Butterfly Indicator shows a decline of 50% between 1990 and 2005. We expect to develop a Grassland Butterfly Indicator with an improved coverage across European countries. We see also good perspectives to develop a supra-national indicator for climate change as well as an indicator for woodland butterflies.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6ff6edd641cb6e58efe8f5067c663f972971304d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecological Modeling

1. R. Fox
2. Nick J B Isaac
3. Pedro Cardoso
4. Dirk Maes
5. David Roy
6. P. Borges
7. C. Stefanescu
8. A. Strien

In Ecology

1. Pedro Cardoso
2. David Roy
3. Nick J B Isaac
4. M. Böhm
5. P. Borges
6. J. Belnap
7. Miranda C. Jones
8. A. Strien

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. R. Fox
2. Nick J B Isaac
3. P. Borges
4. David Roy
5. Dirk Maes
6. Pedro Cardoso
7. C. Stefanescu
8. A. Strien

Citations in the corpus

• Distance sampling and the challenge of monitoring butterfly populations (2011, unknown): “Moreover, understanding detectability will inform new techniques for monitoring rare species of particular conservation concern, and in the wider countryside (Thomas 1983; Roy, Rothery, & Brereton 2007; Nowicki et al. 2008; van Swaay et al. 2008).”
• Adapting the IUCN Red List criteria for invertebrates (2011, background): “Such monitoring has been restricted mainly to butterflies (van Swaay et al., 2008; Lewis and Senior, 2011), allowing the publication of red lists (van Swaay et al., 2010, 2011; Fox et al., in press) and the selection of priority areas for conservation (van Swaay and Warren, 2006).”
• The use of opportunistic data for IUCN Red List assessments (2015, background): “Only few regions in the world collect data on trends, geographic range size and population sizes in a structured way (e.g., statistically sound monitoring networks – Thomas, 2005), usually for a limited number of taxonomic groups (e.g., birds – Baillie, 1990; butterflies – van Swaay et al., 2008).”
• Recent trends in butterfly populations from north-east Spain and Andorra in the light of habitat and climate change (2011, background): “For butterflies in particular, over the last 15 years there has been a strikingly similar decrease in the average abundance of grassland species in our region and in western Europe in general (van Swaay et al. 2008).”
• Effect of local weather on butterfly flight behaviour, movement, and colonization: significance for dispersal under climate change (2011, methodology): “…B 3 W B 2 Intermediate 1 \ W B 2 2 \ W B 4 3 \ W B 4 2 \ W B 3 High W [ 2 W [ 4 W [ 4 W [ 3 Colonization frequency Data on colonization frequency were obtained from the Dutch Butterfly Monitoring Scheme monitoring (Van Swaay et al. 2008), with standardized transect counts over the period 1990–2008.”
• Building capacity in biodiversity monitoring at the global scale (2017, background): “The necessary knowledge levels to carry out the monitoring are relatively low, as programs are often aimed at common, charismatic, or conspicuous taxa (e.g. birds, butterflies; Schmeller et al. 2012a; van Swaay et al. 2008).”
• The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes (2013, background): “…such as butterflies and bumblebees, in some developed nations, particularly in western Europe (Maes & Van Dyck, 2001; Warren et al., 2001; Fox et al., 2006a; Fitzpatrick et al., 2007; Kosior et al., 2007; Goulson et al., 2008; van Swaay et al., 2008; Van Dyck et al., 2009; Cameron et al., 2011).”