title: Impact of urbanization and gardening practices on common butterfly communities in France.
abstract: We investigated the interacting impacts of urban landscape and gardening practices on the species richness and total abundance of communities of common butterfly communities across France, using data from a nationwide monitoring scheme. We show that urbanization has a strong negative impact on butterfly richness and abundance but that at a local scale, such impact could be mitigated by gardening practices favoring nectar offer. We found few interactions among these landscape and local scale effects, indicating that butterfly-friendly gardening practices are efficient whatever the level of surrounding urbanization. We further highlight that species being the most negatively affected by urbanization are the most sensitive to gardening practices: Garden management can thus partly counterbalance the deleterious effect of urbanization for butterfly communities. This holds a strong message for park managers and private gardeners, as gardens may act as potential refuge for butterflies when the overall landscape is largely unsuitable.
authors.affiliation: Département Ecologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle UMR 7204 - Conservation des espèces, suivi et restauration des populations, Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation Paris France.
authors.forename: Benoît
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1017-5643
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fontaine
authors.affiliation: UMR CNRS 6553 ECOBIO - Université de Rennes 1 Paris France.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bergerot
authors.affiliation: Département Ecologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle UMR 7204 - Conservation des espèces, suivi et restauration des populations, Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation Paris France.
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Le Viol
authors.affiliation: Département Ecologie et Gestion de la Biodiversité Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle UMR 7204 - Conservation des espèces, suivi et restauration des populations, Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la Conservation Paris France.
authors.forename: Romain
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Julliard
keywords: Lepidoptera; gardening practices; monitoring; refuge; urbanization impact