The Disappearance of Butterflies

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Josef H. Reichholf. The Disappearance of Butterflies

Contents

Guide

Pages

The Disappearance of Butterflies

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

A Review of 50 Years of Butterfly and Moth Research

Insects fly towards UV light

Urban Lepidoptera: more common than expected

Death’s head hawk-moth: a guest that can barely live with us anymore

The Fascinating Life of Aquatic Moths

Evenings at the pond

The hidden lives of the little nymphs

How the caterpillar breathes under water

Up and away in an air balloon

The advantages of living in water

A place to live or an ‘ecological niche’

The destruction of the biotopes of the little nymphs

The Benefits of Being Attracted to Light

Like moths to a flame

The red blindness of butterflies

The Strange Behaviour of the Purple Emperor

Butterflies on drugs

Psychedelics in the insect kingdom

The Nettle-feeding Lepidoptera: An Instructive Community

Nettles: indicators of overfertilization

Nettles escape defoliation

Maize: damaged beyond repair

Cabbage whites: parasites and protection

The mass flight of the map butterfly: singularities in the realm of the butterflies

Does climate change affect the seasonal morphs of the map butterfly?

Nature is too diverse for simple generalizations

The Great Migrations of the Butterflies

The migratory flights of the painted ladies

Small tortoiseshells as travellers

Butterfly invasions

Poisonous Butterflies and Moths: From the Cabbage White to the Six-spot Burnet

Cabbage whites on the Dalmatian coast

Whenever it rains in the desert …

Which factors affect the reproduction of butterflies, and when?

Useful models

The need to go slow

Poison in the body

The Secret Life of Small Ermine Moths

The bird-cherry, a tree of the riparian woods

Toxins in bird-cherries

The life history of the caterpillars of the ermine moth

Helpful hungry caterpillars*

Between parasitism and population explosion

Longer-term population cycles

Coppice management and its consequences

Generations and multiyear cycles of ermine moths

Parasitoids on other ermine moths

The lifecycles of butterflies and moths

Hardy Winter Moths

Life at the edge of winter

The mastery of seasonal niches

Why female winter moths do not need wings

Deforestation, poison and the decline of the codling moth and the winter moth

The common quaker moth in early spring

Brimstones: The First Spring Butterflies

Butterfly attacks

The problem with early flight

Müllerian mimicry

The critical factor of spring weather

‘Balance’ in nature

Assessing the Abundance and Occurrence of Butterflies: A Major Challenge

Starting with 1,000 watts

How to successfully attract moths to light

Change and continuity

All praise to those who helped us with identification problems

Butterfly and Moth Names

The Decline of Moths and Butterflies. The village outskirts and the open fields

Findings in the riparian woods

The findings from Munich

The decline in species diversity

Warm summers and what they mean for the moths and butterflies

The Metropolis: The End of Nature or Salvation for Species Diversity?

The advantage of structure

Monocultures produce pests

Cities as islands of warmth

Overfertilized, poisoned land

Nature-friendly cities

The Inhospitality of the Countryside

From idyll to slurry

Monocultures and changes to the ground-level microclimate

The cooling of fields and forests

Increased growth reduces the abundance of moths and butterflies in the riparian woods

Boundary ridges in the fields and meadows: a supportive network

‘Infilling’ and ‘compensating areas’

The ‘nutritional condition’ of the landscape

The disappearance of the cockchafers

The turning point for our farmers: the 1970s

The Krefeld Study

A subsidy system without an exit mechanism

Nature conservation and nature enthusiasts

The Devastating Effect of Communal Maintenance Measures

The End of the Night: The Role of Light Pollution

Summary: A Cluster of Factors

The Disappearance of Moths and Butterflies and Its Consequences

What We Can Do about the Disappearance of Moths and Butterflies

The Beauty of Moths and Butterflies

Two Findings in Place of an Epilogue

Select Bibliography

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

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Отрывок из книги

Josef H. Reichholf

Translated by Gwen Clayton

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In the spring, the rising temperature of the pond water allows the plants to grow new shoots and leaves. This onset of growth evidently signals to the caterpillars that it is time to become active once more. They leave their cavities, crawl upwards and feed on the tender new leaves. This provides them with the wax necessary for their transformation into the water-repelling condition. By May, the only caterpillars will be those in air-filled leaf cases, feeding hungrily on new floating leaves until they are fully grown and ready for pupation. The moths that hatch from those pupae make up the first generation. Their descendants will continue to develop, without the need for a hibernation period. With these two reproductive cycles, the year of the ‘little nymph’, Nymphula, is complete.

My dissertation also dealt with the details of the skin structure and its changes during the period when the caterpillar stops breathing through its skin and starts to breathe oxygen using the system of trachea that is typical of insects. This required imaging with an electron microscope, which the University of Munich was able to arrange. But what was truly exciting for me was – and remains – the lives of these moths with their adaptations to the water plants that sustain them and their life in the water. Why did they come to inhabit this environment? What advantages does it offer them?

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