An updated list of butterflies (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) of two Guatemalan seasonally dry forests.

Abstract

Guatemala has a great diversity of butterflies, although there have been few intensive surveys on Lepidoptera in the country so far. We present an updated list of 218 species in 149 genera, 19 subfamilies, and six families of butterflies sampled at two seasonally dry forests in the Salamá and Motagua valleys in central and eastern Guatemala, by integrating new data from field surveys conducted in 2014-2021 into our previously published data (Yoshimoto et al. 2018, 2019), with Amblyscirteselissaelissa Godman, 1900, Repensflorus (Godman, 1900), and Niconiadesnikko Hayward, 1948 (Hesperiidae: Hesperiinae) as new country records. We collected a hairstreak species, Chalybshassan (Stoll, 1790) (Lycaenidae: Theclinae), at the Motagua Valley site, representing the second record for Guatemala since the early 20th century, after we rediscovered it at the Salamá Valley site in 2011 and 2012 (Yoshimoto and Salinas-Gutiérrez 2015). Nymphalidae and Hesperiidae had larger numbers of species than the other four families at both sites. In Pieridae and Nymphalidae, species composition was similar between the sites, whereas in Lycaenidae, Riodinidae, and Papilionidae it differed more greatly between the sites. These results confirm the relatively high lepidopteran diversity of Guatemalan dry forests, noteworthy for the small areas that comprise the study sites, and represent marked similarities and differences in butterfly fauna and phenology within these forests.