In April of 2024, I was fortunate to receive support from the Charles Sutherland Scholarship fund, which significantly contributed to my research. This funding allowed me to partially cover the expenses associated with a field work trip to Denmark.
The primary purpose of this trip was to collect DNA samples from three distinct butterfly species across five selected locations in central Jutland. This sampling effort is integral to my PhD research, which focuses on investigating the impacts of land use changes and climate change on the genetic diversity of insect populations in Denmark.
Over the past decades, many studies have reported a declining trend in insect populations across the world and the most important drivers of this decline have been identified as habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation, along with climate change. In this context, a country like Denmark, in which over 60% of its surface is dedicated to agriculture, is an ideal setting to study how human-driven landscape alterations affect butterfly genetic diversity.
In addition, I will use the data collected to make predictions about potential changes in butterfly genetic diversity under various scenarios of land use and climate change. In this way, I hope to contribute to the design of more sustainable landscape management practices that allow the persistence of butterfly populations in agricultural land.
