Challenges and bottlenecks for butterfly conservation in a highly anthropogenic region: Europe's worst case scenario revisited

Recent increasing homogenisation in Austrian butterfly communities over the past decades

“…Finderup Nielsen et al 2019 with respect to vascular plants). Hence, the pre‐Anthropocene inventories of species are still maintained at the larger geographic scale, but with many species at the edge of extinction and vanishing from many of their former flight places (see Seibold et al 2019, Crossley et al 2021, Maes et al 2022 for contrasting North American trends). Consequently, communities become increasingly stable in dominance orders and the likelihood of a species shifting the categories from rare to intermediate or dominant is constantly decreasing (Fig.…”

“…Nevertheless, species requiring specific habitat conditions and being weak dispersers declined remarkably, in particular after the onset of major changes in land use during the 1960s and 1970s causing habitat loss and fragmentation. In this respect, Bell et al (2020), Habel et al (2022) and Maes et al (2022) pointed to the importance of long-term insect monitoring as being vital for the conservation of insect biodiversity.…”

Rode Lijst van de macro-nachtvlinders in Vlaanderen 2023

“…54% van de soorten zit in één van de hogere Rode Lijstcategorieën (van Kwetsbaar tot en met Regionaal Uitgestorven). Ooit kwamen er in Vlaanderen ook typische dagvlinders van moerassen en natte hooilanden voor (Maes et al 2022), maar die zijn (grotendeels) verdwenen. Moerasnachtvlinders zijn echter ook goede indicatoren voor habitatkwaliteit (Veraghtert et al 2012).…”

’Disease-smart’ assisted migration can enhance population fitness and increase resistance to pathogens via immune priming

“…In many cases the exact mechanism by which habitat loss and fragmentation suppress populations is unclear, but the outcomes can nonetheless be substantial. For example, habitat loss contributed to a 69% decline in the populations of 45 extant butterfly species (Maes and Van Dyck 2001), coinciding with an increase in the extinction rate from 0.2 to 1.7 species per five years since 1950 (Maes et al 2022).…”