Abstract
We provide the first description of the effects of local vegetation and landscape structure on the fruit-feeding butterfly community of a natural archipelago of montane rainforest islands in the Serra do Espinhaço, southeastern Brazil. Butterflies were collected with bait traps in eleven forest islands through both dry and rainy seasons for two consecutive years. The influence of local and landscape parameters and seasonality on butterfly species richness, abundance and composition were analyzed. We also examined the partitioning and decomposition of temporal and spatial beta diversity. Five hundred and twelve fruit-feeding butterflies belonging to thirty-four species were recorded. Butterfly species richness and abundance were higher on islands with greater canopy openness in the dry season. On the other hand, islands with greater understory coverage hosted higher species richness in the rainy season. Instead, the butterfly species richness was higher with lower understory coverage in the dry season. Butterfly abundance was not influenced by understory cover. The landscape metrics of area and isolation had no effect on species richness and abundance. The composition of butterfly communities in the forest islands was not randomly structured. The butterfly communities were dependent on local and landscape effects, and the mechanism of turnover was the main source of variation in β diversity. The preservation of this mountain rainforest island complex is vital for the maintenance of fruit-feeding butterfly community; one island does not reflect the diversity found in the whole archipelago.
Highlights
Mechanisms that maintain the structure of communities have aroused great interest from the scientific community [1]
Our study suggests that naturally fragmented forested mountaintops host lower richness compared to other types of fragmented forests in Brazil [38,78]
The genus with the greatest representation of species was Yphthimoides (6 species and 91 individuals), which is very diverse in Atlantic rain forest areas and open areas of Cerrado in central Brazil [79] and has both forest and matrix specialist species [38]
Summary
Mechanisms that maintain the structure of communities have aroused great interest from the scientific community [1]. Environmental conditions can play a percussive role, or filters, facilitating or hindering the establishment of species [2,3]. Environmental parameters, indicative of environmental structure, function as a filter in the structuring of communities, preventing the establishment of some species [4,5]. These filters can be global (e.g. effects of climate), regional (e.g., effects of landscape) and local (e.g., effects of habitat).
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