Includes bibliographical references and index.

Basics of island biogeography -- The British islands: a geological and historical outline -- Island butterflies: understanding and interpreting records -- British and Irish butterfly species: links and gradients -- Island associations and species affinities: geographical influences -- Assessing the status of individual species on islands: from geography to ecology -- Changing patterns of species incidences on islands -- British and Irish islands: an evolutionary vantage -- Island studies: a glance back and the view ahead.

This book provides a brief overview of the fast developing research on the butterflies of the islands over the past 20 years. The first three chapters introduce basic topics in island biogeography, past environments and aspects of butterfly biology and study. Chapters 4 to 6 drop down in scale from a broad view of butterfly geography over Britain and the European islands to finer issues affecting butterfly species richness and species incidences on the smaller offshore islands. Chapters 7 and 8 investigate changes in the faunas on islands, especially turnover and evolutionary changes, with an increasing emphasis on butterfly ecology in the changing landscapes of the Holocene. A short final chapter identifies the key features emerging from the review, summarizing the basic issues of island butterfly faunas, and then looks ahead to a new era of studies on the islands. This book, which focuses on broad geographical and ecological issues, hopes to provide a guide to priorities in future research and the conservation of butterflies on British and Irish islands, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

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Title from PDF title page (viewed August 27, 2018).