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Moths count: recording moths for conservation in the UK

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Abstract

Insects are under-represented in current assessments of biodiversity loss at global and national scales. Butterflies, and a few other insect taxa, have been used as indicators of biodiversity change and as flagships for conservation, especially in temperate zones, but these groups are typically species-poor and may not be representative of insects as a whole. Macro-moths, on the other hand, are an important component of UK biodiversity, in terms of both species richness and ecosystem function. Moth abundance has decreased significantly in the UK and there is rapidly growing interest in the surveillance and monitoring of macro-moths among amateur and professional scientists. The Moths Count project was instigated to raise awareness of moths, increase moth recording and set up a long-term National Moth Recording Scheme for c.900 species of macro-moth in the UK. Since 2006, Moths Count has promoted moths to millions of people, trained and engaged thousands in recording and collated over eight million species distribution records into the National Moth Recording Scheme. These data, though incomplete at present, are already contributing to assessments of biodiversity loss and to conservation initiatives. We present initial results which show that substantial changes are already evident for macro-moths in the UK. The northern range margins of a sample of 12 species have shifted northwards by 194.8 km on average between 1982 and 2009 (7.8 km year−1 over the 25 years between survey mid-points). Provisional distribution trends (not corrected for variation in recording effort) were calculated for 43 species and the results corroborated both positive and negative population-level changes assessed previously.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the thousands of volunteers past and present, especially the county moth recorders, for collecting the distribution records now collated into the NMRS. We would also like to thank the many partner organisations and individuals for their support of the Moths Count project. Principal funders included the Heritage Lottery Fund, Butterfly Conservation, Environment Agency, Natural England, Countryside Council for Wales, City Bridge Trust, Northern Ireland Environment Agency, Royal Entomological Society, Scottish Natural Heritage, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, The 1989 Willan Charitable Trust, John Spedan Lewis Foundation and British Entomological and Natural History Society. Many other organisations are involved, providing support and helping to host events. A full list of partners is provided at www.mothscount.org. We thank Martin Warren for guidance, Roger Dennis for statistical advice and two anonymous referees for constructive comments. RF, ZR, LH, SA and LW were funded by Heritage Lottery Fund project HG-05-00610.

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  1. Butterfly Conservation, Wareham, UK

    Richard Fox, Zoë Randle, Les Hill, Susan Anders, Laura Wiffen & Mark S. Parsons

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  1. Richard Fox
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Fox, R., Randle, Z., Hill, L. et al. Moths count: recording moths for conservation in the UK. J Insect Conserv 15, 55–68 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-010-9309-z

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