The publication of the Atlas of Britain & Ireland’s Larger Moths was a mammoth achievement, collating millions of macro-moth records and shedding light on the changes in species distribution and abundance over recent decades. Here, the authors highlight some of the key findings that came out of this work, and discuss the potential drivers of these changes.
In 2019, Butterfly Conservation in partnership with MothsIreland published the Atlas of Britain & Ireland’s Larger Moths, combining records from Butterfly Conservation’s National Moth Recording Scheme (NMRS) and the MothsIreland dataset. This landmark publication, the first atlas of all larger moth species in Britain, Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, is testament to the efforts of the moth-recording community, who contributed a staggering 25.6 million macro-moth records of 893 species, spanning 275 years, from the earliest record of Kentish Glory Endromis versicolora, in 1741, to the end of 2016.