A Safeguard study examines how butterfly communities respond to intensively managed agricultural landscapes. Focusing on a large-scale area, it investigates how butterfly species richness, abundance, and community composition vary across sites dominated by agricultural land, forest, or grassland. The study also explores how environmental variables at the landscape scale shape differences between rare and more common butterfly species.
The research is set against a broader context of rapid biodiversity loss in agricultural habitats worldwide. Intensive farming practices such as land-use change, widespread pesticide use, and monoculture production have led to habitat fragmentation and ecosystem simplification. Despite this, only a small number of countries have introduced minimum requirements for maintaining native habitats within agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity.
Butterflies, like other pollinators, are particularly sensitive to agricultural intensification and have suffered substantial declines in both species richness and abundance. The study reveals a strong imbalance in butterfly communities: a few common species persist at high abundances in intensively farmed landscapes, reflecting their greater tolerance to stressors such as pesticide exposure and habitat fragmentation. In contrast, most species occur at very low abundances, indicating limited access to suitable habitats and resources and a high sensitivity to ongoing agricultural pressures.
Butterfly species richness also depends on the interaction between agricultural and forest land cover. Agricultural land alone provides little benefit, but positive effects increase when forest cover is high. Similarly, forests support higher species richness when agricultural cover is low. These findings show that agricultural landscapes support greater butterfly diversity when substantial forest habitats are present.
Overall, the findings emphasise the importance of forest habitats within monoculture-dominated agricultural landscapes for maintaining butterfly diversity and community stability. Only a limited number of species can adapt to agricultural environments, and even these show limited resilience. Forests contribute structural and ecological features that grasslands alone cannot replace. The combination of agricultural land and forest cover is particularly important for supporting rare species. When agricultural land occurs in isolation, it has a negative effect, highlighting that even the most adaptable butterfly species rely on surrounding natural habitats.
Read the full study here.