Results and Publications

The State of Garden Moths

After 16 years of running as a national scheme, we have been able to produce the first comprehensive analysis of the trends in the fortunes of 178 common moth species in our gardens. The full report on the state of Garden Moths in Great Britain and Ireland, based on the data that the GMS has collated, can be found by clicking on the image below.

State of Garden Moths

Individual Species Accounts

The distribution and trends of the 178 species can be found here : Species Accounts. These follow the format illustrated below.

Species Accounts
Some notes and interpretation:
  1. Usually a short summary of the overall abundance and distribution, a summary of the long-term trends taken from the Moth Atlas (and subsequent updates), and an overview of the GMS trends.
  2. Summary table of numbers of moths and traps/gardens recording (for all traps and those included in the trend analysis)
  3. Distribution maps over time. Red shows traps where an average of one or more moth recorded per year, blue open circles traps which did not record this species (<1 moth/year).
  4. Flight periods for each of the years. Coloured red-purple by year. If differences between North and South coloured by North or South.
  5. Trend in abundance over time. Individual year relative abundances with confidence intervals and fitted trend line. Text gives the change per year with confidence intervals and indicates if this is statistically significant. If there are significant North-South differences, separate points and trend lines are shown for North and South gardens and the two slope estimates and significance (P value) for the North-South difference are shown.
Full details of the methods are provided in the main report and statistical methods documents



Technical Reports

About the GMS data (pdf): A general description of the scheme - also lists the auxiliary data used in the analysis. [v1.0]

Species Lists (Excel): A file documenting the species on the recording forms for each region in each year 2007-24

Review 2023 (pdf): A review of the data available for the main (summer) scheme as of the end of the 2023 season. [v1.0]

WinterReview2023.pdf: A review of the data available for the winter scheme as of the end of the 2023 season. [v1.0]

Trend Analysis Methods (pdf): Detailed methodology for the trend analyses

RISvGMS (pdf): A comparison of GMS trends with those seen in the Rothamsted Insect Survey. [v1.0]

North-South Review (pdf): Trends in the North and South of the UK - shows the comparison for all species (excluding the winter species) not just those where there are significant differences.

Scientific Publications

Bates, AJ et al., Assessing the value of the Garden Moth Scheme citizen science dataset: how does light trap type affect catch? Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, 146: 386-397, 2013.

Bates, AJ et al., Garden and landscape-scale correlates of moths of differing conservation status: Significant effects of urbanization and habitat diversity, PloS ONE: 9(1): e86925, 2014.

Wilson, JF et al, Climate association with fluctuation in annual abundance of fifty widely distributed moths in england and Wales: a citizen science study, J Insect Conserv, 19: 935-946, 2015.

Wilson, JF et al., A role for artificial night-time lighting in long-term changes in populations of 100 widespread maro-moths in UK and Ireland: a citizen-science study, J Insect Conserv, 22: 189-196, 2018. - (Sadly this is not open-access, but some of the authors are GMS people so can provide you a copy on request)