Conclusion:
There remains a pressing concern of global declining butterfly populations, mainly due to anthropogenic pressure from urban development (Van Swaay and Warren., 1999). Green spaces within urban locations may help to maintain total abundance and species diversity (Hennig and Ghazoul, 2011), but habitat fragmentation and smaller size and quality of habitat patches will alter community composition (Belinsky et al., 2019). The structural similarities between urban and rural habitats and the limited extent of urbanisation on Lipsi Island may have driven the overlap in abundance and diversity of butterflies and vegetation, whilst the greater habitat heterogeneity and discarded food in urban environments could have promoted the abundance and species richness of generalist and opportunistic birds. Thus, metrics other than simple counts of individuals and species are needed to characterise the impacts of urbanisation on community composition across multiple trophic levels. Future research should aim to characterise changes in community structure along a gradient of urban development and island size and the implications for ecosystem functioning. Whilst butterflies were considered as important indicator species here, follow-up studies should quantify effects of urbanisation on other pollinators and arthropod assemblages for a more complete understanding of changes throughout the food web. Finally, dietary characterisation is required to quantify changes in the strength and diversity of ecological interactions, which could help elucidate impacts of urbanisation on the flow of energy through ecological networks.