If you would like to submit an abstract to give an oral presentation or poster presentation at the Symposium: The 2010 Target and Beyond for Lepidoptera  this and other linked pages will help you by providing guidance on submission.

The main themes for the conference are as follows:

1. 2010 Assessments for Lepidoptera

This session will review progress towards the global Convention on Biological Diversity target: “to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level”¹ the European Union set an even more ambitious target: "…to protect and restore habitats and natural systems and halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010…"². Contributions that assess the situation at the national or multinational level are invited for this session.

2. 2010 Assessments for Other Taxa 

This session, with invited speakers only, will address progress towards the 2010 target for selected other taxa.

3. The Science of Conservation Management

Whilst the previous two sessions address the issue of progress towards the 2010 target, this session will report on the science underpinning conservation management for butterflies and moths. Within this broad theme we invite speakers to report on research that seeks to understand the fundamental processes that inform the conservation of Lepidoptera.

4. Practical Habitat Management

This session will be held in parallel with ‘The Science of Conservation Management’ and here we invite practitioners, whether professional or amateur, to share their experience of practical habitat management. In this session we are particularly looking for studies that can demonstrate positive (or negative) responses by Lepidoptera to habitat management. It is vital that such studies have involved monitoring programmes that have measured the response of Lepidoptera to management (e.g. increases or decreases in transect numbers of the target species in areas that are managed compared with areas that are unmanaged). Typical studies might include woodland management, grassland management, agri-environment schemes including changes to field margin management or hedgerow cutting.

5. Landscape-Scale Conservation

Conservation was once seen as directed at a particular habitat in a particular place: ‘site-based’ conservation. In the last decade of the 20^th century it became increasingly obvious that such a narrow focus was unlikely to result in the long-term conservation of species, and the focus shifted to embrace the emerging science of spatial ecology and the conservation of complexes of habitat. Speakers are invited to offer contributions that address landscape-scale issues in the conservation of Lepidoptera.

6. Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation

Climate change poses real challenges for the conservation of Lepidoptera: will they be able to keep track with changing climate zones? Will the UK gain more species than it loses? Will species stay in the same place but modify the parts of the habitat that they use? Should we change land-use to compensate for increased temperatures? Should we give a ‘helping-hand’ by actively translocating species to places that they cannot reach naturally, but appear to be newly suitable because of climate change? We invite contributions that address these fundamental issues.

7. Future Challenges

The beginning of the Symposium will assess to what extent we have reached the 2010 target: but what of the future? The Ninth meeting of the ‘Conference of the Parties’ of the Convention on Biological diversity in Bonn in 2008 started to address this question and suggested a new action period of 2011-2022 in it’s decision IX/9³. So what are our future challenges, and how will we address them for the better conservation of Lepidoptera? We will be inviting several experts to put forward their ideas.

Submission of Abstracts to Deliver an Oral or Poster Paper.

If you wish to submit an abstract for an orally-delivered paper or a poster paper, please follow the links below, please note that there are two options depending on which themes that you wish to offer a paper for:

A. If you wish to submit an abstract for an oral or poster paper for Themes 1, 3, 5, 6 or 7, please follow this link > Submission Guidelines A

B. If you wish to submit an abstract for an oral or poster paper for Theme 4, please follow this link > Submission Guidelines B

ABSTRACT DEADLINE: MONDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2009 - THE DEALINE HAS NOW PASSED, PLEASE USE THESE PAGES AS A REFERENCE ONLY.