Census techniques and Pollard & Yates

[Nick Greatorex-Davies]

Mike

You wrote:

>>> Michael Gochfeld <gochfeld at EOHSI.RUTGERS.EDU> 02/05/02 15:51:02 >>>
>In recent inquiries regarding butterfly censusing the following book was
>mentioned.

>Pollard E and TJ Yates. Monitoring Butterflies for Ecology and Conservation.

<SNIP>

>In any case we do the same thing on each census (approximately weekly). We also
>record the relative abundance of all flowers in each segment (about 110
>identified species) and note which nectar sources are being used.

I would be interested to know how you do that? I have an undergrad student working 'for' me for six months looking at ways of assessing habitat quality for butterflies using habitat, habitat structure and management information gathered for butterfly transect routes here in the UK. Nectar sources are just one of the attributes of quality I am hoping the student will look at, and to look how to measure these nectar sources (species / type and relative abundance) in a way that could be carried out by at least the more competent recorders in a meaningful way. Part of the difficulty is getting recorders to do more than they do already, so it has to be 'quick and dirty' - but not too dirty - if there is any hope of getting them to do it at all!

>For each butterfly we note whether it was flying, sitting, courting, mating,
>feeding when first encountered, and the nectar source (butterflies are never
>too numerous for this, wish they were).  However, it is not always easy to tell
>whether a butterfly is actually nectaring or merely sitting on a flower.

Gathering behavioural information is not in our remit for the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, but this intrigues me. I cannot see how this can be done while walking a Pollard type transect - there are just too many butterflies. During the height of the season it could take all day! It is not unusal to record several hundred butterflies of one or more species on a transect walk at the height of the season on some sites (admittedly many of our transects are on nature reserves and the like). But then I think our transects are much longer than yours (2 to 4 Kilometres / 1.5 to 3 miles).

Regards
Nick G-D

***************************************************************************************
Mr J Nick Greatorex-Davies
(Butterfly Monitoring Scheme co-ordinator & moth schemes liaison for BRC)
Biological Records Centre
NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
(Formerly the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE))
Monks Wood
Abbots Ripton
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire PE28 2LS  UK

Tel: (+44) (0) 1487 772 401
Fax: (+44) (0) 1487 773 467
E-mail: ngd at ceh.ac.uk
BMS web site: http://bms.ceh.ac.uk
BRC web site: http://brc.ac.uk
***************************************************************************************


 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 

   For subscription and related information about LEPS-L visit:

   http://www.peabody.yale.edu/other/lepsl