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Abstract
Ecologists are often asked to point to cases where ecological theory has been important in shaping conservation and management. As a companion to this special issue, we conducted an informal survey of butterfly biologists and conservationists to ask how ecological theory has informed butterfly conservation. Greater than 80% of responses pointed to the importance of metapopulation theory for conservation, followed by basic natural history, principles related to population viability analysis, and ideas related to community ecology. Concrete examples from respondents' experiences were about equally balanced between cases in which theory changed conservation and cases in which basic biology changed managers' thinking about general theory. These examples emphasize the importance of the interplay between general principles and natural history in butterfly conservation.