Impacts of Solar Energy on Butterfly Communities in Mediterranean Agro-Ecosystems

摘要

The rapid expansion of Utility-Scale Solar Energy (USSE) is expected to meet economic and environmental challenges that society faces today and in the future. Yet there is a paucity of comprehensive research on biodiversity responses to USSE. Here we investigated the impact of USSE on species movements via the correlations between landscape connectivity modeling and the similarity of butterfly communities given their life-history traits. Our results suggest that mobile butterflies cope with USSE while interpatch movement of sedentary butterflies does not depend on landscape structure. We provide land-managers and energy-developers with an innovative tool to assess the ecological integration of USSE.