What’s happened to all the butterflies?

Butterfly numbers in the UK appear to be at the lowest on record
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, the 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. Help support
our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod