Assessing national conservation priorities: An improved red list of British butterflies

Warren, M. S.; Barnett, Linda; Gibbons, David W.; Avery, M. I.

doi:10.1016/s0006-3207(97)00037-2

Cited by 50 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Thus, nationally widespread species have declined just as much within the North Wales region as more restricted species, even though previous analyses based on the national 10 km grid have indicated that localized species have su¡ered higher percentage declines (Heath et al 1984;Thomas 1994;Thomas & Abery 1995). Coarse-grained maps grossly underestimate population-level rates of decline, particularly for common species that initially have many populations per grid square (Thomas & Abery 1995;Warren et al 1997). Decline rates per unit area may be comparable for widespread and localized species, but localized species initially occupy much smaller total areas (table 1 and ¢gure 1).…”

Section: (C) the Assessment Of Population-level Declinementioning

confidence: 97%

“…Thirteen out of 23 conservation priority (Warren et al 1997) butter£y species in Britain have been subject to partial (regional) or complete (national) population-level mapping (table 1). For these species, every known population within the sample area has been visited, the approximate colony boundaries mapped and the extent of their £ight areas calculated.…”

Section: (A) Flight Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to a simple measurement of area, the IUCN (1994) criteria also require species to meet two out of the following three criteria: severe fragmentation, continuing decline and extreme £uctuations (Mace & Lande 1991). These species generally ful¢l the ¢rst and third of the criteria and most of them also ful¢l the second (Warren et al 1997). Using 10 km 2 occupancy, only zero, zero and three of these species would fall into these three categories, respectively: coarse-grained data grossly overestimate current status (Thomas & Abery 1995).…”

Section: (A) Assessment Of Species Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For practical reasons, species ranges are commonly plotted as presence^absence in 10 km Â10 km grid squares in northern Europe, in 50 km or coarser grids in less heavily researched parts of the world and as relatively crude range maps in ¢eld guides. It is widely accepted that species may populate only a small proportion of occupied' areas, but the need for rapid conservation policies and actions has already driven widespread use of these data (Vane-Wright et al 1991;Groombridge 1992;Prendergast et al 1993;Gaston 1994;Quinn et al 1997;Warren et al 1997;Kunin 1998). Therefore, the consequences of measuring range areas in di¡erent ways should be quanti¢ed (Gaston 1994;Thomas & Abery 1995;Warren et al 1997;Kunin 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flight areas of British butterflies: assessing species status and decline

Cowley

Thomas

et al. 1999

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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Geographical range size is a key ecological variable, but the consequences of measuring range size in di¡erent ways are poorly understood. We use high-resolution population data from British butter£ies to demonstrate that conventional distribution maps, widely used by conservation biologists, grossly overestimate the areas occupied by species and grossly underestimate decline. The approximate £ight areas occupied by 20 out of 45 colonial British species were estimated to cover a median of only 1.44% of the land surface within occupied regions. Common species were found to be declining faster than conventional distribution maps suggest: common and rare species had no signi¢cant di¡erence in their population-level rates of extinction. This, combined with the log-normal form of the range-size frequency distribution, implies that species-level extinction rates may accelerate in the medium to long term. Population-level conservation is a matter of great urgency for all species, not just for the rarest.

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Section: (C) the Assessment Of Population-level Declinementioning

confidence: 97%

Section: (A) Flight Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: (A) Assessment Of Species Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Flight areas of British butterflies: assessing species status and decline

Cowley

Thomas

et al. 1999

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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“…bellargus is bivoltine in the UK and its sole larval host plant is Hippocrepis comosa, with the offspring of the second adult generation overwintering as larvae. Between 1950 and the 1980s, 70 % of P. bellargus colonies in the UK had gone extinct and its range had retracted by 42 % (Thomas 1983;Warren et al 1997). Since receiving Priority Species status in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan in the 1990s, the number of UK colonies of P.…”

Section: Polyommatus Bellargus In the Ukmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accounting for habitat when considering climate: has the niche of the Adonis blue butterfly changed in the UK?

2014

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The dramatic recovery of three species of grassland specialist butterfly threatened with extinction at their high latitude range limits in the 1980s has been attributed to two factors:increased grazing on calcareous grassland sites and warmer air temperatures. Both result in the warming of soil surface temperatures, favourable to the larvae of these species. We address the influence of both of these factors on the habitat usage of the butterfly Polyommatus bellargus, undergoing recovery at its northern range edge. We test the hypothesis that the larval niche of P. bellargus has become less constrained in the past three decades, whilst controlling for changes in habitat structure. Once habitat change has been accounted for we find no evidence for a broadening of the larval niche of P. bellargus.Further, we show that coincident with the recovery of P. bellargus there have been drastic reductions in average turf height across UK chalk grasslands, but changes in air temperature have been highly variable. We conclude that changes to soil surface temperatures caused by reducing turf heights will have been a more consistent influence than air temperature increases, and so habitat improvements through increased grazing will have been the major driver of recovery in P. bellargus. We consider the need to account for changes in habitat when exploring the impacts of recent climate change on local habitats in thermophilous species, and emphasise the continued importance of habitat management to support such species under variable local climates.

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