NOCTURNAL MACROLEPIDOPTERA ASSOCIATED TO CORK OAK WOODLANDS AND NEIGHBOUR FOREST REMNANTS IN A FRAGMENTED MEDITERRANEAN LANDSCAPE (LEPIDOPTERA)

Abstract

Composition and diversity of forest macromoth communities strongly depend on the tree cover and they are very sensitive to environmental changes in terms of species composition and their relative abundance. Very few studies concerning the composition of forest Lepidoptera have been carried out on thermophilous oaks, one of the forest types most intensively exploited by humans for timber and other forest products. In this paper we analysed a georeferenced dataset of macromoths collected in an oak-dominated landscape of southern Italy in order to describe moth communities and their functional relationships with forest cover. We found that moth communities inhabiting cork oak and riparian woodlots are the most functionally linked to the tree cover, mainly because of less fragmentation than other investigated forest types. Eupithecia dodoneata, Cyclophora puppillaria, and Catocala nymphagoga were the most abundant oak-feeders, the last two shared with other moth communities of thermophilous oaks sampled in Spain and Corsica. However, all of them were absent in studies carried out in Central Europe where more mesophilous oak woodlots were sampled and where some species found in Calabrian beech forests at high altitudes were abundant. Standardized studies are needed to clarify large-scale functional relationships between moth communities and a given forest type, allowing us to predict and mitigate the detrimental effects due to land use and climate change.