7 research outputs found
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Hares and Skylarks as Indicators of Environmentally Sensitive Farming on the South Downs
Grants to farmers are increasingly being directed towards encouraging environmentally sensitive farming practices. This is particularly true in areas that are valued for their landscape and wildlife, such as the chalk grasslands of the South Downs. If such grants are to maintain and improve environmental conditions that are suitable for wildlife, the outcomes need to be monitored regularly. Ideally the form of monitoring should be simple and inexpensive to carry out, to allow farmers to assess for themselves their farms' suitability for wildlife and amend their farming practices accordingly. The current research identified and investigated the potential of hares and skylarks, two easily identified wildlife species which are typical of chalk grassland habitats, as indicators of the quality of farmland for wildlife on the South Downs. Hares and skylarks are familiar species to most farmers and there is some concern among conservationists that the numbers of both species are declining.
The research has shown that both species can be counted without much difficulty. Hare numbers are highest on farms where fox control is practised, and this can over-ride the effects of other factors. When the effect of predator control is allowed for in the analysis, hares appear to favour farms where there is a wide diversity of habitat types. The breeding density of skylarks is determined by more localised environmental factors on areas of farms, such as vegetation height and grazing pressure. Both hares and skylarks can benefit from the introduction of rotational set-aside, but ESA grassland is not favoured by hares or skylarks if grazed very short.
The research suggests that monitoring hares and skylarks could be a valuable aid in assessing the effects of environmentally sensitive farming policy on downland wildlife
Type Specimens: Dead Or Alive?
Volume: 59Start Page: 282End Page: 28
Phylogenetic, habitat, and behavioural aspects of possum behaviour in European Lepidoptera
We describe the behaviour of playing possum, or thanatosis, in mate rejection by non-receptive female butterflies of the Satyrinae of the Palearactic. In this behaviour females feign death with closed wings and release themselves from the substrate on which they are settled. This behaviour only occurs with extreme male persistence and is the final part of a mate-rejection behavioural sequence. We suggest that this behaviour may be relatively rare, possibly restricted to the tribes Elymiini and Maniolini. There are potential associations with female mating frequency, male mate-locating mechanisms and the physical structure of habitats where attempted mating occurs. We suggest that the behaviour occurs in species where females occasionally mate more than once, where the predominant male mating strategy is a perching sit-and-wait tactic and the species occupy woodland structures. In such circumstances males have relatively few opportunities to mate, male-female encounter rates may be relatively infrequent and the physical structure of the habitat allows females that adopt possum mate-rejection to escape from males by dropping into vegetation. We encourage further observations on this behaviour to allow a thorough analysis of its frequency amongst species in order to allow a phylogenetic analysis
Description of Androconia in the Palaearctic Asian Pseudochazara Baldiva (Moore, 1865) Butterfly Species group (Nymphalidae : Satyrinae) with Designation of Two Lectotypes and Reference To Type and Other Material in the Natural History Museum, London
Volume: 30Start Page: 211End Page: 22
The life cycle of the little known and endangered endemic Madeiran Brimstone Butterfly Gonepteryx maderensis Felder, 1862 (Pieridae)
Volume: 32Start Page: 145End Page: 15