Prior summer rain gave no clear repeated link to paired-site relative Ringlet growth in England and Wales in 1984-2024

We tested whether less summer rain was linked to lower Ringlet growth relative to Meadow Brown in the next year at the same sites. We used 12,553 positive site pairs from England and Wales in 1984-2024. Each pair had both species in two consecutive years. We averaged the log growth contrast within each country and year. Four country and period models controlled current rain, current and prior temperature, and time. Prior rain-deficit slopes ranged from -0.151 to +0.026 log10 units per 100 mm less rain. All four corrected intervals included zero. Zero-inclusive and persistent-site checks did not establish a repeated decline. Early Wales had only 2-13 usable site pairs per year. Selected positive records, incomplete indices, changing sites, country weather and short time series limit inference. Matching removes some shared site effects but does not identify a causal drought response, absolute loss or a pollution effect. The package includes source records, exact source hashes, code, estimates, figures and independent numerical checks.

butterflies · rainfall · drought · paired sites · relative annual growth · observation bias · UKBMS · null result