Identifying research needs to guide conservation of Atrytonopsis loammi, a rare, habitat specialist butterfly

Insect abundance is declining at an annual rate of 1-2%. Habitat specialists are particularly at risk given the narrow niches required for their survival, especially in the context of growing threats from habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. An example of an at-risk habitat specialist is the Loammi skipper (Atrytonopsis loammi), a rare butterfly whose range has declined significantly over the past century. Effective conservation depends upon understanding species-specific needs, making it critical to evaluate research gaps for at-risk taxa. Thus, our goals are: 1) describe research trends for the Loammi skipper, and 2) perform a systematic review of US imperiled butterfly research to identify gaps for the Loammi skipper compared to other at-risk taxa. For this, we performed literature searches using scientific and common names for each butterfly taxon ranked imperiled by NatureServe. Out of 316 taxa, we retrieved papers for only 55, or 17%. We randomly selected 10 taxa from across the range of research effort, and categorized all papers retrieved for each taxon according to research topics. The main topics covered were conservation, ecology, habitat, disturbance, species distribution modeling, and non-inferential descriptive accounts. Compared to other taxa, we found low research production for the Loammi skipper, and notable gaps for disturbance, species distribution modeling, population genetics, life history, and ex-situ conservation. We foresee that increased research efforts to fill these gaps could aid development of successful conservation strategies for the species, and that the methodology applied here can be used for other imperiled insect species.