A case study on the impacts of oil palm plantation on butterflies: differences in plantation scale and management implications

Abstract

Changes in land use to oil palm plantations have an impact on the biodiversity of tropical butterflies known to have species with a wide ecological range. We research to determine the impact of oil palm plantations on the diversity of butterfly species on two different plantation scales (large scale and small scale of plantation). The results showed that both of the oil palm plantations equally affected the increase in the number and level of species diversity of butterflies as many as 100 - 366% on large-scale oil palm plantations and by 0 - 466% on small-scale oil palm plantation. The development of oil palm plantations also has an impact on changes in species composition which is reflected in the level of similarity in species which is quite low, namely 0 - 0.22 in large oil palm plantations and 0.12 - 0.20 in small-scale plantations. The percentage of species loss in both types of plantations is the same, namely 60%, but there is greater species gain on small-scale oil palm plantations (60 - 400%) than large-scale (166 - 366%). Plantation management that creates habitat heterogeneity can increase the level of butterfly biodiversity on both plantations.