Author Correction: Moth biomass has fluctuated over 50 years in Britain but lacks a clear trend (Nature Ecology & Evolution, (2019), 3, 12, (1645-1649), 10.1038/s41559-019-1028-6)

Abstract

In the original version of this Brief Communication, software errors during data extraction and initial processing led to a substantial corruption of the version of the Rothamsted Insect Survey (RIS) dataset that was used in analyses. This corruption systematically affected a quarter of the total time series (1967–1979 and 2017, but not 1980–2016), and was responsible for the large increase in estimated biomass that was observed between 1978 and 1980. In light of these errors, all analyses presented in the original paper were rerun using the correct RIS data. The spirit of the two main conclusions in the abstract was largely unchanged. The primary conclusion, that ‘severe declines [in insect biomass] are not supported by the world’s longest-running insect population database’, is still supported, although the original finding that moth biomass increased over the study period has been revised from ‘moth biomass estimates ... revealed increasing biomass between 1967 and 1982, followed by gradual decline from 1982 to 2017, with a 2.2-fold net gain in mean biomass between the first (1967–1976) and last decades (2008–2017) of monitoring.’ to ‘moth biomass estimates… revealed substantial between-year biomass change but no difference in mean biomass between the first (1967–1976) and last decades (2008–2017) of monitoring’. Analyses underpinning the second conclusion, that ‘High between-year variability and multi-year periodicity in biomass emphasize the need for long-term data to detect trends and identify their causes robustly’, were unaffected by the data corruption and therefore this conclusion is also still supported.