Qualitative and Quantitative Loss of Habitat at Different Spatial Scales Affects Functional Moth Diversity

Land use change has led to large-scale insect decline, threatening ecosystem resilience through reduced functional diversity. Even in nature reserves, losses diversity have been detected. Hereby, changes local habitat quality and landscape-scale quantity can play a role driving toward erosion. Our aim was analyze how factors simultaneously affect Therefore, we sampled moths two Italian coastal forest reserves at 60 sites. focus on richness, redundancy niche occupation, being important for resilience, following the insurance framework. Ecological information about 387 species 14 traits used Twenty-five groups were recognized estimate occupation redundancy. Fourteen 12 measured condensed by using Principal Components Analysis. The resulting PC-axes served as predictors linear mixed effects models. Functional of lower sites with low quantity, indicating resilience. Especially landscape structure, viz. humidity-nutrient gradient, but also plant diversity, promoting richness. Landscape fragmentation, increased impermeability insects, occupation. Local landscape-wide are both maintaining inside reserves. small isolated might fail preserving biodiversity functions adverse acting from surrounding structure configuration.