Poster: Moth conservation depends on the preservation of large habitats

Urbanization is driving moth declines worldwide; two-thirds of common species have declined significantly since the mid 1900s. Moths are pollinators, and they provide an important food resource for birds, bats and other wildlife. Urban greening investments like wildflower habitats improve bee diversity but their value for moths had not been thoroughly assessed. The goal of this project was to measure the habitat quality of small (fragmented) and large (unfragmented) greening investments for moths. Our first objective was to measure the diversity of moth communities in wildflower habitats along an urbanization gradient. We hypothesized that habitat fragmentation would negatively influence moth diversity. We partnered with Columbus Metro Parks and Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed to survey moth communities in Franklin County, Ohio, a rapidly growing metro area. Moths were collected from five small and five large wildflower habitats along an urbanization gradient in the summer of 2022. We quantified impervious surfaces within a 1000m buffer as a proxy for habitat fragmentation. We found that moth abundance was significantly higher at sites with lower fragmentation. Family richness was also higher at less-fragmented sites, but the effect was not statistically significant. The results of this study will inform greenspace management practices to improve pollinator conservation outcomes in cities.