Abstract
The monitoring of sympatrically occurring Phengaris teleius and P. nausithous metapopulations in the surroundings of Přelouč, Czech Republic, was launched over a decade ago in connection with the planned waterway construction on the Elbe river. The mark-recapture surveys were initially restricted to 10 habitat patches on the right river bank, but in 2010 three new patches were discovered on the opposite bank. We use the monitoring results for 2011–2015 to assess how the discovery of additional populations alters the impact evaluation of the prospective construction. The overall abundance of P. teleius in the recently discovered populations was about twice as high as on the right bank (ca. 2,800 vs. 1,400 adults on average), while the numbers of P. nausithous on both banks proved to be balanced (at ca. 600 adults on average). Furthermore, we confirmed a substantial exchange of butterflies between population representing both banks, which indicates a well-integrated metapopulation in both species. Since the waterway would partly destroy the two largest populations on the right bank, the potential loss due to its construction is estimated at 40.1–64.3% P. teleius individuals and 20.2–47.4% P. nausithous individuals occurring there. Nevertheless, concerning the entire metapopulation, the predicted decline is considerably smaller, reaching 13.9–25.7% in P. teleius and 8.5–20.0% in P. nausithous. Consequently, a long-term survival of the species is likely even in the case of the waterway construction, as long as appropriate management is applied on the unaffected habitat patches.
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Acknowledgements
This study was partly supported by the Research Project of the Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, No. MSM 6046070901 and Internal Grant Agency of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CIGA) through its Project No. 20152004. The work of Piotr Nowicki was funded by the Polish National Science Centre Grant DEC-2013/11/B/NZ8/00912. Experiments comply with current laws of the Czech Republic where they were performed. The authors are very thankful to the Waterways Directorate of Czech Republic for providing extensive information on the plans of waterway construction. The authors also thank Lenka Cibulková, Petr Sedlák, Tom Šikula and especially Jiří Cibulka, who was responsible for initiation of the monitoring. Finally, we are very grateful to all the students, who participated in the fieldwork, and to Koya Allen for the English proofreading services.
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Vrabec, V., Kulma, M., Bubová, T. et al. Long-term monitoring of Phengaris (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) butterflies in the Přelouč surroundings (Czech Republic): is the waterway construction a serious threat?. J Insect Conserv 21, 393–400 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-017-9982-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-017-9982-2