Fewer butterflies seen by community scientists across the warming and drying landscapes of the American West

Forister, Matthew L.; Halsch, Christopher A.; Nice, Chris C.; Fordyce, James A.; Dilts, Thomas E.; Oliver, Jeffrey C.; Prudic, Kathleen L.; Shapiro, Arthur M.; Wilson, J. Keaton; Glassberg, Jeffrey

doi:10.1126/science.abe5585

Cited by 112 publications

(121 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…From 1999 to 2018, the linear models indicated that butterfly abundance decreased by more than half (52.5% in total, 3.8%/year) and species richness decreased by over a quarter (27.1% in total; 1.6%/year). These results are similar to long-term studies elsewhere in the United States [ 19 , 21 ] and Europe [ 5 , 11 – 15 ] that have found similarly substantial declines in butterfly abundance and species richness. Importantly, our results indicate that these declines are occurring even after accounting for changing climate and land use around the study sites.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…Other studies have found precipitation to have negative effects [ 26 ] especially during the spring [ 46 ] and on habitat specialists [ 13 ]. Alternately, summer precipitation was found to have a positive effect on butterfly numbers in the relatively dryer western United States [ 21 ] and a continental analysis of North America indicated that butterflies are increasing in cooler, wetter regions [ 20 ]. Butterflies are sensitive to drought conditions [ 54 ], and precipitation may thus have variable effects [ 16 ] based on location and climate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The California work demonstrated species richness reductions at 5 of 10 sites over 35 years, with declines being most notable at lower-elevation locations with greater habitat loss [ 16 ] and frequent use of neonicotinoids [ 17 ]. More recently, this dataset was combined with citizen science data from the North American Butterfly Association and iNaturalist and indicated a 1.6% annual decline in butterfly abundance over four decades in the western United States [ 21 ]. The work in Massachusetts indicated declines in northern butterflies [ 18 ] while the study in Ohio found a 33% cumulative decline in butterfly abundance from 1996 to 2016 [ 19 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Butterfly declines in protected areas of Illinois: Assessing the influence of two decades of climate and landscape change

et al. 2021

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Despite increasing concern regarding broad-scale declines in insects, there are few published long-term, systematic butterfly surveys in North America, and fewer still that have incorporated the influence of changing climate and landscape variables. In this study, we analyzed 20 years of citizen science data at seven consistently monitored protected areas in Illinois, U.S.A. We used mixed models and PERMANOVA to evaluate trends in butterfly abundance, richness, and composition while also evaluating the effects of temperature and land use. Overall butterfly richness, but not abundance, increased in warmer years. Surprisingly, richness also was positively related to percent impervious surface (at the 2 km radius scale), highlighting the conservation value of protected areas in urban landscapes (or alternately, the potential negative aspects of agriculture). Precipitation had a significant and variable influence through time on overall butterfly abundance and abundance of resident species, larval host plant specialists, and univoltine species. Importantly, models incorporating the influence of changing temperature, precipitation, and impervious surface indicated a significant overall decline in both butterfly abundance and species richness, with an estimated abundance decrease of 3.8%/year and richness decrease of 1.6%/year (52.5% and 27.1% cumulatively from 1999 to 2018). Abundance and richness declines were also noted across all investigated functional groups except non-resident (migratory) species. Butterfly community composition changed through time, but we did not find evidence of systematic biotic homogenization, perhaps because declines were occurring in nearly all functional groups. Finally, at the site-level, declines in either richness or abundance occurred at five of seven locations, with only the two largest locations (>300 Ha) not exhibiting declines. Our results mirror those of other long-term butterfly studies predominantly in Europe and North America that have found associations of butterflies with climate variables and general declines in butterfly richness and abundance.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Butterfly declines in protected areas of Illinois: Assessing the influence of two decades of climate and landscape change

et al. 2021

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“…Although Peterson et al (2020) did not detect an overall abundance-diet breadth relationship, it is the case that the most abundant species tended to be extreme specialists (consistent with the high variance we observed in our specialized species). There is clearly much yet to be learned about ecological and dietary specialization, and the observations reported here are made more relevant in the midst of ongoing reports of declining insect abundances from around the world (Salcido et al 2020;Wagner 2020;Forister et al 2021;Halsch et al 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Jack-of-all-trades paradigm meets long-term data: generalist herbivores are more widespread and locally less abundant

Sudta

Salcido

Forister

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Some of the most common ecological interactions are between plants and herbivorous insects, and these relationships are central to the study of ecological specialization. We address established assumptions about the positive association between local abundance and dietary specialization using a 17-year dataset on the caterpillars of Ecuador. Our long-term data include standardized plot-based samples as well as general, regional collections, allowing for investigations across spatial scales and using different indices of abundance for 1917 morphospecies of Lepidoptera from 33 families. We find that specialists are locally more abundant than generalists, consistent with a key component of the “jack of all trades, master of none” hypothesis, which has otherwise received poor to mixed support from previous studies that have mostly involved fewer species and shorter time series. Generalists achieve greater prevalence across the landscape, and we find some evidence for geographic variation in the abundance-diet breadth relationship, in particular among elevational bands. Interspecific variation in abundance also had a negative relationship with diet breadth, with specialists having more variable abundances across species. The fact that more specialized species can be both rare and common highlights the ecological complexity of specialization.

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“…By 2020, fewer than 2,000 monarchs were recorded from California overwintering sites. The reasons for this extremely rapid decline are not entirely clear and are hard to disentangle from time series data (see Crone et al, 2019), though climate change—and especially autumnal warming—has been implicated broadly in the decline of western North American butterflies (Forister et al, 2021). The lack of recovery in western monarchs between 2018–2020 is also consistent with possible Allee effects.…”

Section: What Lessons Can Be Learned From Declines In Western Monarchs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Are eastern and western monarch butterflies distinct populations? A review of evidence for ecological, phenotypic, and genetic differentiation and implications for conservation

Freedman

Roode

Forister

et al. 2021

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Monarch butterflies are a species of conservation priority due to declining overwintering populations in both eastern and western North America. Declines in western overwintering monarchs—more than 99.9% since monitoring began—are especially acute. However, the degree to which western monarchs are a distinct biological entity is uncertain. In this review, we focus on phenotypic and genetic differentiation between eastern and western monarchs, with the goal of informing researchers and policy‐makers who are interested in monarch conservation. Eastern and western monarchs occupy distinct environments and show some evidence for phenotypic differentiation, particularly for migration‐associated traits, though population genetic and genomic studies suggest that they are indistinguishable from one another. We suggest future studies that could improve our understanding of differences between eastern and western monarchs. We also discuss the concept of adaptive capacity in eastern and western monarchs as well as non‐migratory populations outside of the monarch's primary North American range. Finally, we discuss the prospect of completely losing migratory monarchs from western North America and what this entails for monarch conservation.

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Fewer butterflies seen by community scientists across the warming and drying landscapes of the American West

Cited by 112 publications

References 39 publications

Butterfly declines in protected areas of Illinois: Assessing the influence of two decades of climate and landscape change

Butterfly declines in protected areas of Illinois: Assessing the influence of two decades of climate and landscape change

Jack-of-all-trades paradigm meets long-term data: generalist herbivores are more widespread and locally less abundant

Are eastern and western monarch butterflies distinct populations? A review of evidence for ecological, phenotypic, and genetic differentiation and implications for conservation

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