Xerothermic habitats are closely related to continental steppes of Eurasia and contain communities rich in rare and endemic species, especially insects. Considering the dramatic loss of xerothermic habitats due to climatic and anthropogenic changes the evaluation of genetic variation and phylogeographical patterns in xerothermic species is a matter of utmost importance if...
During the past 50 years development of farming practices caused tremendous changes in European agricultural landscapes and many insect species became increasingly restricted to protected areas. Yet little is known about long-term trends of insect diversity and community composition in these often small reserves. We performed a comparative study on changes in orthopteran...
Sites at various distances from eutrophic and mesotrophic lakes and fens on the island Öland in southern Sweden were systematically surveyed in summer (May–August) and autumn (late September–October) to elucidate the hibernation sites of wetland carabid beetles. Thirty-five of 47 wetland species were found in their winter quarters. In areas ≤50 m from the lakes and fens, the...
Tallgrass prairie butterfly surveys in recent decades in four states in the USA indicate numerous declines of prairie-specialist butterflies including Speyeria idalia, Oarisma poweshiek, Atrytone arogos, Hesperia dacotae, and H. ottoe in fire-managed preserves, including large high-quality ones. These results replicate previous findings, indicating that upon initiation of...
Obligate myrmecophilic butterfly species, such as Phengaris (Maculinea) teleius and P. nausithous, have narrow habitat requirements. Living as a caterpillar in the nests of the ant species Myrmica scabrinodis and M. rubra, respectively, they can only survive on sites with both host ants and the host plant Great Burnet Sanguisorba officinalis. After having been reintroduced into a...
Northern Wisconsin bogs provide a natural experiment on butterfly population occurrence in a naturally highly fragmented vegetation type, which may provide insight on conserving butterflies in anthropogenically fragmented and degraded landscapes. We surveyed butterflies in bogs (about as unaffected by humans as possible, but naturally occurring over <1% of northern Wisconsin...
Synchronisation of the phenology of insect herbivores and their larval food plant is essential for the herbivores’ fitness. The monophagous brown hairstreak (Thecla betulae) lays its eggs during summer, hibernates as an egg, and hatches in April or May in the Netherlands. Its main larval food plant blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) flowers in early spring, just before the leaves appear...
Managers surveyed for sensitive butterfly species in the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan area between 1982 and 2000 using an opportunistic “wandering transect” method. To extract as much valuable information as possible from the data collected by this method we analyzed patterns of surveys and butterfly presence and absence within 250 m square cells gridded across...
Conservation managers of oak woodlands have been reintroducing fire both as an ecological process per se and to assist in restoring native plant communities. To increase our understanding of the impacts of reintroduced fire on ground-dwelling invertebrates we examined the response of ants and spiders to a late season (autumn) prescribed fire conducted in a blue oak (Quercus...
Precise information about endangered species, in particular identifying their resources requirements, is needed to identify areas that might support populations. Little is known about the endangered Mount Hermon June Beetle (Polyphylla barbata) found only within Zayante soils region of Santa Cruz County, California. We investigated the beetle’s host plant selection, habitat...
This study examines whether in nature endangered quino checkerspot (Euphydryas editha quino) larvae will return to diapause and if so where they choose to hide. Multiple years of diapause probably help larvae survive drought years and sites chosen have high survival value to the species. Ninety square meters of habitat were created by removing non native plants and replacing them...
Habitat mitigation frequently leads to planting of new habitat, assuming that it can replace lost natural habitat. Yet this practice has rarely been examined in detail. In the USA habitat mitigation is frequently allowed under the US Endangered Species Act, providing monitoring reports which represent a potentially valuable data source for imperiled species. We used publicly...
Insects provide essential ecological services in both the natural environment and in human-dominated habitats. Because pollinator declines associated with land use change have been reported across the globe, there is great concern that pollinators and the ecosystem services they provide will be negatively affected. This study examines the diversity and abundance of bee...
During 1993–1996, two teams (Schlicht, Swengels) surveyed the same Minnesota prairies, but without any coordination of sites, routes, methods, dates, and results between teams. In 27 instances, both teams surveyed the same site in the same year between 30 June and 18 July. For the 18 most frequently recorded species, abundance indices (individuals/h per site) significantly...
The recently-published European Strategy for the Conservation of Invertebrates (Haslett 2007) brings together much information on the conservation needs and status of the world’s most thoroughly documented insect fauna under the general goal of halting their decline, and underpinned by a list of seven main objectives to enhance their conservation (Appendix 1). The values of such...
From the early 1990s through 2005, we conducted butterfly transect surveys annually at the same sites in three regions of Wisconsin. We compared specialist butterfly population indices at three sites where a permanent non-fire refugium (a unit kept unburned through cycles of rotational fire elsewhere in the site) was established during this study to indices at comparison sites...