Wednesday, July 17, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
BUTTERFLIES:
Drop is significant
across varieties
Continued from page 17
of biodiversity since they
experience the same types
of pressures from land-use
changes, climate change and
habitat degradation as other
insect groups.=
The data from Ohio
enabled population trends to
be estimated for 81 butterfly
species and found three times
as many species were trend-
ing downward as upward 3
three out of every four spe-
cies with a positive or nega-
tive trend grew less abundant
over the course of the moni-
toring. Forty of the analyzed
species had no significant
trend up or down.
<Species with more north-
ern distributions and fewer
annual generations declined
the most rapidly,= he said,
adding that these species are
adapted to cooler regions and
may do worse in Ohio with
warming temperatures.
Wepprich noted that even
some invasive species associ-
ated with human-dominated
landscapes are declining,
which suggests the trends are
rooted in widespread envi-
ronmental causes.
<Analyses of insect
declines are dominated by
European studies about but-
terflies, but our study is
showing that the rate of
change in Ohio butterfly
abundance is very similar
to that found in monitor-
ing programs in the UK, the
Netherlands and Spain,=
Wepprich said. <The rate of
total decline and the propor-
tion of species in decline mir-
ror those documented in com-
parable monitoring programs.
What9s common among all of
the monitoring programs is
that they are in areas with a
high human impact and made
possible by dedicated volun-
teer recorders.=
Even though the common
butterfly species aren9t yet
close to extinction, declines
in those species will never-
theless have an outsized, neg-
ative impact on ecosystem
services provided by insects,
he said.
Earlier studies involving
intensive, long-term moni-
toring of individual butterfly
species have allowed for rig-
orous estimates of declines
in those species, Wepprich
said. Over the past two
decades, the migratory east-
ern North American monarch
has declined by more than
85 percent and the western
North American monarch by
more than 95 percent, said
Wepprich, adding that some
of the rarest butterflies have
also fallen off sharply.
<Monarchs and rare
species were monitored
because people are worried
about them going extinct,=
Wepprich said. <In Ohio, they
monitored every species they
could and found declines in
species previously not on the
radar for conservation.=
The rate of butterfly
decline in Ohio is greater
than the global rate of 35
percent over 40 years, and is
closer to the estimated rate
for insects in general: a 45
percent decline over 40 years.
<Our study adds another
example of declines in com-
mon butterfly species thought
to be well suited to human-
modified habitat,= he said.
The Ohio Lepidopterists,
the Ohio Department of
Natural Resources, the
Ohio Biological Survey,
the Cleveland Museum of
Natural History and the
Dawes Arboretum spon-
sor the long-term monitor-
ing program. Supporting
this research were the U.S.
Department of the Interior
and North Carolina State
University.
Collaborators included
scientists from Michigan
State University, Georgetown
University, the University
of Oregon and the Ohio
Lepidopterists.
25
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