Globally, urbanization is rapidly increasing. As cities develop, remnants of historic landscape remain, but the ecosystem significance of these areas remains unclear. Small, unused lots, which are not apparently valuable to large, charismatic species, may still harbor immense diversity in small taxa. Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) are exceptionally good candidates to assess this. This group is diverse and speciose, with heterogeneous responses to habitat quality because of their dependence on highly specific host plants. Many nocturnal species are easily surveyed by light-trapping. Furthermore, as winged adults they are able to disperse across the inhospitable urban matrix, and so can occur in relatively isolated areas. We conducted a biodiversity survey, documenting the nocturnal lepidopteran species assemblage in habitat fragments in urban Boston. Large moths are extensively studied with passive trapping, in which a light is left on unattended overnight, but smaller species are often damaged beyond recognition by this approach. The bulk of the diversity in Lepidoptera is small species. For our research, we actively trapped by hand at our research sites, so we could document this extensive diversity typically missed by existing studies. With this improved analysis, we can draw detailed conclusions about habitat fragments too small and degraded for even the larger moth taxa.
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