Transect field report · 2018–2025

Eight seasons of butterfly transects across Warwickshire

Coughton Park, the Alne Wood complex and Coxmere, walked weekly by volunteer recorders since 2018. This report consolidates every weekly recording form into one dataset and tracks what it says about species diversity, Fisher's α and the habitat behind it.

Site by site

Does any individual survey show a real trend?

A Theil–Sen slope and Mann-Kendall significance test for Fisher's α and species richness, computed independently for each survey with at least three seasons of data.

Coxmere (2 seasons) and Brandens Wood (1 season) don't yet have enough seasons for a trend test — shown descriptively only in the summary dataset.

Winners & losers

Which species are moving, at Coughton Park

Annual abundance trend (Theil–Sen slope, individuals/year) for every species with a non-zero record across Coughton Park's continuous 2018–2025 run — the site with enough seasons to say something about individual species.

The flight season

When the transects see the most butterflies

Mean total abundance per recording week, pooled across every visited site-season. Week 1 opens on 1 April; the season runs 26 weeks to late September.

Habitat signal

What the vegetation surveys add

Sward-height surveys exist for the same transects in most years. Joined to the diversity indices above, two relationships clear conventional significance.

Fisher's α vs. mean sward height
Taller, more uniform sward → measurably lower diversity
Species richness vs. sward-height variation
More structural variety within a transect → more species
Weather signal

Do warmer, sunnier weeks really mean more butterflies?

Historical daily weather for the study area (Open-Meteo's ERA5-based archive, grid point 52.23°N 1.88°W near Alcester) joined to every recorded week. A raw correlation would mostly just rediscover the calendar — both counts and warmth peak in midsummer — so each week's abundance and weather are first compared against the average for that week of the season, and it's the leftover anomalies that are correlated below.

Temperature anomaly vs. abundance anomaly
A week warmer than typical for its point in the season
Sunshine anomaly vs. abundance anomaly
A week sunnier than typical for its point in the season

Coverage & caveats

How complete is the record — and how it was built

Not every scheduled week was walked. Shading below is the share of that season's weekly visits that were actually walked, by site.

The real 2020 story

Walked vs. formally counted, by year

A site being walked and a butterfly count actually being submitted that week are different things. Most years the two track fairly closely; 2020 is a striking exception.

    Reading the numbers

    The indices, briefly

    A one-line description of each; tap the i for the formula and how to read it.