Entomological collections as a tool for interpreting climate change

Insects have long been employed as bioindicators of environmental quality owing to their distinctive ecological traits and their pivotal roles at various trophic levels. Notably, moths serve as invaluable indicators for monitoring vegetation recovery in the aftermath of environmental perturbations, or as precursors for assessing the effects of environmental shifts at a localized scale. For such evaluations, time series data of captures obtained from the same locations are of critical importance as foundational reference datasets. Thus, our investigation focused on the resampling of two areas in the Lucchese Apennines in Tuscany, utilizing as a baseline the esteemed "Marini" collection of nocturnal Lepidoptera housed within the Department of Biological, Geological, and Environmental Sciences (BiGeA) at the University of Bologna.