A global perspective on conserving butterflies and moths and their habitats

Lepidoptera are one of the four major insect orders, and one of the best studied invertebrate groups, containing over 160,000 described species and an estimated equal number of undescribed species, arranged in 124 families (Kristensen et al. 2007). Lepidoptera occupy all except the very coldest terrestrial regions, but the Neotropics and Indoaustralian region have five times more species per unit area than the Palaearctic and Nearctic, and three times more than the Afrotropical region (Heppner 1991). They are scale-winged insects, traditionally divided into three major assemblages: micro-moths, butterflies and macro-moths (Kristensen et al. 2007). The order represents a mega-diverse radiation of almost exclusively phytophagous insects, probably correlated with the great diversification of flowering plants since the Cretaceous (Menken et al. 2010). They provide many vital and economically important services within terrestrial ecosystems (e.g. nutrient recycling, soil formation, food resources and pollination). The scale of these contributions is illustrated by the estimate that blue tit (Parus caeruleus) chicks consume at least 35 billion caterpillars each year in the UK alone (Fox et al. 2006). Lepidoptera also have considerable human significance, both economic and scientific. A growing industry farms pupae for supply to butterfly houses across the world. One moth species has been domesticated in order to provide silk (i.e. Bombyx mori