Why moths are important

Their deep history helps us to elucidate the history of how New Zealand developed geologically, and how our flora and fauna evolved through time.

Both adults and caterpillars are a major source of food for many different animals including birds, spiders, bats, and other insectivorous critters.

Even humans eat them! Moths are also important indicators of a healthy environment and ecosystem. Their presence often indicates the habitat is rich in other critters and a good place to live. Lastly, moths are important pollinators in our ecosystems, as they help seed production of plants when feeding on the nectar or pollen of flowers.

Interestingly, moths can be tightly linked to their host plants, often spending their whole lifecycle on one plant. There are still many New Zealand moths where no one knows what plant its caterpillars need to feed on. Many keen naturalists collect pieces of plant that have caterpillars feeding on them, patiently rear them till they form a pupa and then wait to see what adult moth emerges a month or so later.

Like many of our other native insects, moths can have weird habits. A peculiar characteristic of some of our moths is being flightless. This is usually the female who will hang out on vegetation waiting for the males to find her.

More research is needed to understand what is happening. However, the loss of habitats resulting from more intensive agriculture, commercial forestry, industry and urban development are likely to be major reasons. Other things which may be causing problems for moths include changes in the way we manage our gardens, pesticides, herbicides and light pollution. Climate change is also affecting moths. Whatever the causes, the decrease in moth numbers is a warning to us that all is not well with our environment.

Although many people overlook them, moths are numerous and widespread, with over 2, species in Britain living in a wide range of habitats. They are a major part of our biodiversity and play vital roles in the ecosystem, affecting many other types of wildlife. Both adult moths and their caterpillars are food for a wide variety of wildlife, including other insects, spiders, frogs, toads, lizards, shrews, hedgehogs, bats and birds. Other educational aspects include the intricate wing patterns and iridescence, and as examples of insect migration.

The life cycle of butterflies and moths is one of Nature's wonders and inspirational to children and adults alike. The long history and popularity of butterfly study have provided a unique data resource on an insect group unmatched in geographical scale and timescale anywhere in the world. This has proved extremely important for scientific research on climate change.

People enjoy seeing butterflies both around their homes and in the countryside. Over 10, people record butterflies and moths in the UK alone, involving getting outside and walking considerable distances. Over sites are monitored each week in the UK and collectively volunteers have walked the equivalent of the distance to the moon counting butterflies. Several hundreds of thousands of people garden for wildlife in the UK, many of them specifically for butterflies and moths.

Tropical butterfly houses in the UK are extremely popular. A new Butterfly World exhibit is estimated to receive one million visitors each year. Thousands of people travel abroad each year looking for butterflies and moths. Main menu.

In order to emphasize this crucial point we offer the following explanations as to why analyzing moth diversity can provide a barometer reading of current fitness inherent with the resource: Adult moths and their caterpillars are food for a wide variety of wildlife, including other insects, spiders, frogs, toads, lizards, shrews, skunks, bats and birds, therefore they are of high value in food webs.

Moth species have an incredible diversity of life history requirements. It's not a case of one size fits all. Having a complete insect life-cycle is about the only common theme one can derive from the group.

From the latter it should be obvious that if an area supports a large number of different species representing a good cross section of Lepidopteron families than chances are many interspecific biological associations have formed.