Abstract

The scarce heath (Coenonympha hero) is an internationally threatened butterfly in Western Europe, where it occurs primarily on hay fields and abandoned arable land in a small-scale agricultural landscape of south-central Scandinavia. Due to afforestation, this habitat is becoming increasingly fragmented in Sweden, and it can be expected that the scarce heath will decline abruptly when threshold conditions for metapopulation persistence are no longer met. We used stepwise polychotomous logistic regression to compare habitat characteristics and isolation measures for patches that harbour large, small or no populations, respectively, in an area of south-western Sweden. We found that patch area, distance to the nearest large population and amount of Galium spp. explained a significant part of the variation in relative abundance among patches. Distance to nearest large population resulted in a better model to predict occupancy than both distance to the nearest inhabited patch and connectivity, which suggests that primarily large populations act as sources for small satellite populations. Today, sites of three of the eight larger populations in the study area have been planted with spruce or pine and will disappear within 20 years. We argue that the disappearance of these patches may very well lead to rapid extinction of the whole metapopulation system.

Keywords

patch characteristics; local abundance; logistic regression; Coenonympha hero; lepidoptera

Published in

Journal of Insect Conservation
2008, Volume: 12, number: 5, pages: 477-482
Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Lundhagen, Anna

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Uppsala University

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss


UKÄ Subject classification

Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Landscape Architecture


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-007-9083-8

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/19178