Abstract
Amazonia comprises a mosaic of contrasting habitats, with wide environmental heterogeneity at local and regional scales. In central Amazonia, upland forest (terra firme) is the predominant forest type and seasonally flooded forests inundated by white- and black-water rivers (várzea and igapó, respectively) represent around 20% of the forested areas. In this work, we took advantage of a natural spatial arrangement of the main vegetation types in central Amazonia to investigate butterfly assemblage structure in terra firme, várzea and igapó forests at the local scale. We sampled in the low- and high-water seasons, combining active and passive sampling with traps placed in both the understory and canopy. Terra firme supported the highest number of butterfly species, whereas várzea forest provided the highest number of butterfly captures. The high species richness in terra firme may reflect that this forest type is floristically richer than várzea and igapó. Várzea is a very productive environment and may thus support a higher number of butterfly individuals than terra firme and igapó. Most butterfly species (80.2%) were unique to a single forest type and 17 can be considered forest type indicator species in this landscape. Floodplain forest environments are therefore an important complement to terra firme in terms of butterfly species richness and conservation in Amazonia.
Highlights
Amazonia is widely recognized as the most biodiverse biome in the world [1,2,3].This high diversity is associated with the massive size of the biome, but is partly explained by its high habitat heterogeneity
We present the first comparison of butterfly assemblage composition in adjacent terra firme, várzea, and igapó forests
Igapó forests are located on the floodplains along the lake margins, whereas an extensive várzea forest occurs on the floodplain squeezed between the
Summary
Amazonia is widely recognized as the most biodiverse biome in the world [1,2,3].This high diversity is associated with the massive size of the biome, but is partly explained by its high habitat heterogeneity. The main macrohabitats are unflooded forests (hereafter, terra firme) and seasonally flooded forests inundated by white- and black-water rivers (hereafter, várzea and igapó, respectively). Flooded forests are situated on floodplains and cover approximately 17% of the basin [9]. White-water rivers flooding várzea forests carry large amounts of nutrient-rich sediments from the Andes and pre-Andean regions [13,14]. These floodplains are exceptionally productive due to the deposition of these sediments with the annual floods [14]. The black-water rivers inundating igapó forests are, on the other hand, relatively nutrient poor and more acidic [11,14]
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