Title: Movements of a specialist butterfly in relation to mowing management of its habitat patches
Abstract: European grasslands and their rich biodiversity have been shaped by humans for centuries through grazing and mowing. While mowing is perceived as good practice for sustaining meadows and conserving butterflies in the long term, the mowing event itself may have negative short-term effect on butterflies. A mosaic of different mowing regimes allowed us to explore this effect while studying movements of a wet meadow specialist butterfly, the scarce large blue. The main results showed that mowing negatively affected butterfly population size and increased butterfly dispersal probability. However, the increased dispersal led only to short-distance movements and was apparently undertaken by individuals not adapted well enough to emigrate. In turn, a larger area of habitat patch was found to be beneficial for promoting long-distance dispersal and hosted bigger butterfly populations. This means that large and unmown meadows support more viable populations and provide better connection among local populations. They are particularly important for persistence of the studied butterfly in a fragmented landscape. Thus, conservation programmes should aim to retain enough unmown habitat each year and to preserve large and interconnected habitat fragments. [Popović M & Nowicki P. (2023). Movements of a Specialist Butterfly in Relation to Mowing Management of Its Habitat Patches. Biology. 2023; 12(3):344.]
