The habitat of the large blue butterfly is largely influenced by location of its food sources.
The species requires a combination of abundant amounts of its larval food plant, Thymus drucei and the presence of Myrmica sabuleti ants in order to survive.

It has also been found that an underlying key factor for the survival of the large blue is site heterogeneity.
The butterfly is most abundant in pastures and abandoned areas of diverse vegetation and shrubbery.
This preference can be explained by examining the result of a uniform landscape.
A constant landscape synchronizes many biological activities including flowering of host plants, adult emergence dates, or larval pressures on the ant colonies.
If important biological functions take place at the same times, the population becomes much more susceptible to random unfortunate events such as environmental disasters.
Thus traditional farming acts to desynchronize the biological system, and allows for re-colonization of patches that are temporarily untouched.
The presence of differing sites and varied ecological structures provides differing microclimates that can make a huge impact on the survival of the large blue butterfly.
The habitat of the large blue butterfly is largely influenced by location of its food sources. The species requires a combination of abundant amounts of its larval food plant, Thymus drucei and the presence of Myrmica sabuleti ants in order to survive.
It has also been found that an underlying key factor for the survival of the large blue is site heterogeneity. The butterfly is most abundant in pastures and abandoned areas of diverse vegetation and shrubbery. This preference can be explained by examining the result of a uniform landscape. A constant landscape synchronizes many biological activities including flowering of host plants, adult emergence dates, or larval pressures on the ant colonies. If important biological functions take place at the same times, the population becomes much more susceptible to random unfortunate events such as environmental disasters. Thus traditional farming acts to desynchronize the biological system, and allows for re-colonization of patches that are temporarily untouched. The presence of differing sites and varied ecological structures provides differing microclimates that can make a huge impact on the survival of the large blue butterfly.
Large blue