Andy and Melissa Banthorpe
“Arrivals and Departures – changes in Bedfordshire’s moth fauna since the mid-1990s.” A look at species that have been added to the county and those lost since the publication of The Butterflies & Moths of Bedfordshire in 1997. Andy & Melissa are the county’s Moth Recorders, a post they have held for macro-moths since October 2006 and micro-moths since March 2016.
Martin Davies
“How many butterfly species are there in the Western Palaearctic? A historical perspective” First presented at the 2018 Butterfly Conservation International Symposium at Southampton, this talk examines how our understanding as to how many butterflies there are in Europe has changed over the last hundred years and is continuing to do so and why this is important from a conservation perspective. It covers a wide variety of butterfly species and ranges across the whole of Western Palaearctic, from North Africa to the Arctic and the Atlantic Islands to Iran.
Andrew Bladon
“How hot is that butterfly? Using individual temperature responses to inform species conservation.” Andrew will talk about his ongoing project in the Insect Ecology Group (Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge) which, in collaboration with the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, aims to develop our understanding of how individual butterflies respond to fine-scale temperature changes, and why this matters for species’ conservation. Using data collected from four Wildlife Trust reserves in Bedfordshire, home to over half the UK’s species, he will outline how they hope this research can be used to inform reserve management strategies which are resilient to climate change.
Members' evening and quiz.