The butterfly diversity of different habitat types in Qilian, Qinghai Province

Abstract

The faunal composition of butterflies in different habitat types in the Qilian area of Qinghai Province, northwest China, was surveyed from 1997 to 1999. Five habitat types were classified based on altitude, climate, soil and vegetation differences: hilly cultivated land, mountain steppe, forest steppe, alpine shrub meadow and bare rock. Of the total collection of 4,367 specimens, 53 species of 35 genera in six families were identified. Species richness, species composition similarity (Jaccard index) and species diversity index (Shannon-Wiener index, H^) were calculated for the five habitat types. The species richness increased in the following sequence: bare rock (6 spp.), mountain steppe (13 spp.), forest steppe (14 spp.), alpine shrub meadow (22 spp.) and hilly cultivated land (23 spp.). In contrast, the species diversity increased in a different sequence: bare work (H^=1.4629), forest steppe (H^=2.2398), mountain steppe (H^=2.2676), hilly cultivated land (H^=2.7071) and alpine shrub meadow (H^=2.7734). The butterfly species composition between forest steppe and hilly cultivated land had the highest similarity (Jaccard index=0.3704), with the second highest similarity between mountain steppe and alpine shrub meadow (Jaccard index=0.2500), and the lowest similarity between bare rock and other habitat types.