It was often said during 2016 that it was a poor year. A number of expected species didn’t turn up or moths were low in number. The year was later than average after a poor spring. However, after gathering all my records together and toting up the list for my garden with the 2016 records I found that the 38 species new to the list had pushed my total over the 1000 mark. So I investigated further by looking at the annual totals for the 5 years since I started trapping in Suffolk.
2012…680 species. 2013…745 species. 2014…726 species. 2015…738 species. 2016…751 species.
To all intents and purposes the trapping in my garden has been much the same over the 5 years, with two Robinson type traps with MV bulbs except for 2012 when I started with just one trap. It has varied a little in location and sometimes other traps have also been used but not (in my opinion) to significantly affect the overall annual totals. My conclusion is that perhaps there was nothing wrong with 2016 and we may have just been expecting too much. Can anyone else add to this conclusion or refute it?
My recollection was species counts were ok. However, there were often cases of single or low counts per species so overall moth numbers, not species counts, were down.