Monitoring change in the abundance and distribution of insects using butterflies and other indicator groups

By J. A. Thomas. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2005

670 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f9a150f8fc25cb64973218324bf65a0a735638ad

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Citations in the corpus

Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators (2016, background): “…from databases such as for the UK Butterfly 441 Monitoring Scheme in which long term population data can allow powerful standardised 442 estimation of abundance in order to explore population trends and impacts of environmental 443 change (Oliver et al., 2010; Thomas, 2005; Thomas et al., 2011).”
More than just indicators: A review of tropical butterfly ecology and conservation (2010, background): “In general, while butterflies are an imperfect indicator species, their sensitivity to environmental change, short generation time and relatively resolved systematics make them more suitable than other candidates (Brown, 1997; Thomas, 2005).”
Opportunities to enhance pollinator biodiversity in solar parks (2021, background): “Although playing a comparatively minor role in crop pollination in temperate regions, butterflies were also included as they are generally well studied, are an iconic component of biodiversity, and have been used as indicators of change for many insect groups for which data are lacking [38,39].”
Distance sampling and the challenge of monitoring butterfly populations (2011, positive): “National-scale trends are probably quite robust, given that species declining on the UKBMS tend also to have shrinking distributions (Warren et al. 2001; Thomas 2005; Fox et al. 2006), but individual sitelevel trendsmight be less precise.”
MEASURING BEE DIVERSITY IN DIFFERENT EUROPEAN HABITATS AND BIOGEOGRAPHICAL REGIONS (2008, neutral): “Commonly used passive sampling methods are pan traps (water traps; e.g., Aizen and Feinsinger 1994, Cane et al. 2000, Thomas 2005) and trap nests (e.g., Frankie et al. 1998, SteffanDewenter 2003, Tylianakis et al. 2005, Buschini 2006).”
Contrasting trends of butterfly species preferring semi-natural grasslands, field margins and forest edges in northern Europe (2007, background): “Butterflies are a particularly useful indicator group in open habitats (Erhardt and Thomas 1991; Thomas 2005), and therefore they were selected as one of the taxa that are actively monitored in agricultural landscapes of Finland (Kuussaari et al. 2000).”
Testing biotic indicator taxa: the sensitivity of insectivorous mammals and their prey to the intensification of lowland agriculture (2007, background): “2006) and that Lepidoptera are recommended as indicator taxa (Luff & Woiwod 1995; Thomas 2005).”
The “Evolutionarily Significant Unit” concept and its applicability in biological conservation (2014, background): “Thus, butterflies represent a good indicator group for other insect taxa (Thomas 2005; van Swaay et al. 2010).”
Is the insect apocalypse upon us? How to find out (2020, background): “Better-known taxa like butterflies, macromoths, orthopterans, and some bees and beetles can serve as indicator or substitute species for other insect groups, but only when carefully validated (Thomas, 2005; Henry et al., 2019).”
Determinants of species richness in generalist and specialist Mediterranean butterflies: the negative synergistic forces of climate and habitat change (2011, background): “Butterflies have been identified as a useful indicator group for many other terrestrial insects for which there is only a very limited amount of distributional data (Thomas 2005).”
Distribution trends of European dragonflies under climate change (2019, background): “For these reasons, fresh‐ water invertebrates have been indicated as an essential future ad‐ dition to Europe's biodiversity monitoring programme (Feest, 2013; Thomas, 2005).”
The generalism-specialism debate: the role of generalists in the life and death of species (2011, background): “…and Lysandra species (Lycaenidae)] during midHolocene forest development and Sub-Atlantic climatic cooling (Dennis, 1977) and is clearly a feature of contractions in distributions with current fragmentation and extinctions [e.g. British Carterocephalus palaemon Pallas (Hesperiidae); Thomas, 2005].”
Ecological specialization matters: long‐term trends in butterfly species richness and assemblage composition depend on multiple functional traits (2015, background): “Ecological and distributional knowledge of butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) is well represented due to their charismatic nature and attractiveness for professional and amateur naturalists (Wilson et al., 2004; Thomas, 2005; Devictor et al., 2012).”