What’s happened to all the butterflies?

Butterfly numbers appear to be at the lowest on record in the UK after a wet spring and summer dampened their chances of mating. This comes on top of a long and worrying trend of decline. To find out what’s going on and what we can all do to help butterflies cope with extreme weather patterns, Phoebe Weston speaks to Dr Richard Fox, head of science for the charity Butterfly Conservation, and to Matthew Hayes who is part of the Banking on Butterflies project, a collaboration between the Insect Ecology Group at the Zoology Department in Cambridge University, and the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN). Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod