Abstract
Road-kill represents a major threat for butterflies and more generally for pollinators. Here we report an observation of conspicuous aggregations of butterflies mud-puddling on roadsides and, for this reason, being massively road-killed by farm vehicles.
Implications for insect conservation
While the reported observation by itself may not entail a significant threat to the populations of the observed species, it provides the opportunity to discuss an overlooked ecological trap, potentially affecting butterflies and especially threatened or endemic species. Indeed, this kind of mortality, due to a very common behaviour in butterflies, could affect any species in any area, and for this reason should be furtherly investigated and, when necessary, appropriately mitigated. Mitigation actions should prevent the formation of moist surfaces along roadsides, and in case of wide verges, provide artificial mud-puddling sites away from roads, in correspondence with the ecotone between roadside and matrix habitat.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due for the financial support to MARE (UIDB/04292/2020 and UIDP/04292/2020). MD was supported by a JdC-Inc post-doctoral grant (IJC2019-039662-I) from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN). Sazrina A. Hossin kindly reviewed the English. Two anonymous reviewers provided useful suggestions to improve the manuscript.
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Campioni, L., Marengo, I., Román, J. et al. Mud-puddling on roadsides: a potential ecological trap for butterflies. J Insect Conserv 26, 131–134 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-021-00367-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-021-00367-y