Moth Community Changes in Coastal SC
How communities change over time - abundance, diversity, and changes in traits with and across species - is a fundamental question in both ecology and evolution. Using Richard Dominick's Wedge Collection (collected 1965-1976) and our modern resurvey (ongoing since 2022), we are comparing intraspecific, interspecific, and whole community changes over the last half century.
This project is currently in the data-collection phase, but we hope to use this resurvey to answer many interesting questions, including:
​
How has the community composition shifted over the past half century? Is diversity increasing, decreasing, or staying stable? Are there patterns of which species are gained or lost (i.e. specialization, voltinism, etc.)?
Are the interactions between moths and their host plants and their own parasites different now? (We are looking especially at mites which live in moth ears!)
Does the timing of flight seasons differ now? Are species lengthening or contracting their flight seasons?
Are there phenotypic changes within species? Are moths getting smaller (or larger)? Are coloration patterns changing?