Brilliant Butterflies

One of the biggest challenges in nature conservation is to understand which species of plants and animals live on a site and how thery are impacted by habitat management practices. This can be a particular problem for insects and other invertebrates, many of which can be difficult to visually identify using traditional approaches. In Brilliant Butterflies we developed and tested eDNA approaches to monitor ground-living invertebrates, flying insects and wider soil biodiversity across a) a series of 6 chalk grassland nature reserves that were being restored and b) a network of 30 newly created chalk grassland banks that were built in school grounds and other local community spaces. The core goals were to explore invertebrate diversity at these sites and track how species composition changed in response to habitat creation and restoration. We worked with individuals and conservation volunteers from local communities throughout the project (as citizen scientists). Natural History Museum led the eDNA and volunteer training aspects. Overall project lead was London Wildlife Trust, working with Butterfly Conservation. Metabarcoding spanned CO1, 18S, 16S and ITS barcodes.

Current

Unknown

Dr John Tweddle; j.tweddle@nhm.ac.uk