Moths and Meadows Final Report

Introduction More than 580 species of Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies) can be found at the HJ Andrews Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. The population consists of several generalist herbivores and many species with highly specialized niches. The low difficulty of light-trap sampling provides an ideal method for tracking moth population diversity as an indicator of overall ecosystem health and change-type. Here we present the preliminary findings from three novel approaches to moth population analysis. William Berk performed meadow boundary sampling in order to describe the dispersal capabilities of moths. Patrick Waters built a metapopulation model to look at intermeadow population dynamics and designed a classification algorithm for moth population habitat parameters. Sean McGregor worked with historical sampling to dynamically create Google Earth overlays and performed machine-learning analysis on the data.