Jennifer Jones Ecology

Confused? So was I when asked to help with December butterfly surveys. But, these weren't normal butterfly surveys. No, we were searching for butterfly eggs!  Although for most butterflies the most obvious way to search for them is in the spring and summer months as adults, for Brown Hairstreaks ( Thecla betulae ), egg searches are the most effective way to record this species and even to uncover a colony. The sites I surveyed have risen from 36 eggs to 186 eggs across only a year or two!  Winter hedge habitat for egg searches (Jen Jones) Butterfly lifecycles There are a few habitat specialists which are surveyed in a different way to standard butterfly transects (example recording forms  and methods  are on the UKBMS webpage). These include the Brown and White-letter Hairstreak egg counts, but also Duke of Burgundy , and Large Blue egg counts and Marsh and Glanville Fritillary larval web counts. Interestingly, the Green Hairstreak is the only UK Hairstreak speci...

Why bother? Invertebrates are excellent indicators of ecosystem health and make up most of life on Earth (97%). In the UK, we have more than 32,000 terrestrial and freshwater and 7,000 marine invertebrate species. Many of these are declining or endangered. Like the diversity of invertebrates, there are many survey techniques depending on the species you want to survey for (target taxa), habitats present, life stage, and whether you are proving presence/absence or calculating populations. What shall I survey? If I had the time I would survey everything but as much as I would love to, this just isn't achievable. So what are the main survey priorities? An excellent starting point is looking at the habitats present as this can inform which groups we might find more of and suggest how invertebrates use the site. It is useful to map habitats and features first, then choose the survey methods to use. This includes habitat type (broad and/or specific), size, connectivity, substrate type, w...