Butterfly fauna (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) in an ecotone between two biodiversity hotspots in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

This paper investigates the butterfly fauna of the ‘Serra do Rola-Moça’ State Park, Minas Gerais, Brazil. We evaluate i) the seasonal variation of species richness and composition; and ii) the variation in composition of the local butterfly assemblage among three sampling sites and between the dry and rainy seasons. Sampling was carried out monthly between November 2012 and October 2013, using entomological nets. After a total sampling effort of 504 net hours, 311 species were recorded, one of them endangered in Brazil, and eight probable new species. Furthermore, two species were new records for the region and seven considered endemic of the Cerrado. There was no significant difference in species richness between the dry and the rainy seasons, however the species composition varies significantly among sampling sites. Due to its special, heterogeneous environment, which is home to a rich butterfly fauna, its preservation is important for the conservation of the regional butterfly fauna.

Papilionoidea inventory of the Sempre Vivas National Park, Minas Gerais State, southeastern Brazil (Insecta: Lepidoptera)

“…Inventories in forested biomes, such as the Atlantic Forest and Amazon, generally comprise more than 500 species (e. g., BROWN JR. & FREITAS, 2002;BROWN, 2005;MIELKE et al, 2010;FRANCINI et al, 2011;BELTRAMI et al, 2014;GARCIA-SALIK et al, 2014;FREITAS et al, 2016), as do inventories carried out in central Cerrado areas (EMERY et al, 2006;. The species richness recorded here is comparable to that obtained in relatively wellsampled areas of southern Cerrado (CASAGRANDE et al, 2012), sites in ecotone with the Atlantic Forest (also known as transition zones) (BROWN & MIELKE, 1968;SOLDATI et al, 2019), and in similar areas of campo rupestre (PIRES et al, 2018;HENRIQUES et al, 2019). Some groups were clearly undersampled, and their richness would likely increase with some additional visits.…”

“…Despite the growing knowledge of Brazilian Lepidoptera, inventories of Cerrado areas are still local, sparse, and underrepresented, mostly concentrated in the Central-West and Highlands (see BROWN & MIELKE 1967 a, b;BROWN & MIELKE 1968;PINHEIRO & ORTIZ 1992;. Thus, there is a lack of information about butterflies occurring in southern Cerrado, transition zones between biomes, and elevated regions, in which Cerrado vegetation is replaced by natural, open, rocky montane vegetation, known locally as campo rupestre (see SOARES et al, 1999;GOZZI et al, 2012;NERY et al, 2014;PIRES et al, 2018;HENRIQUES et al, 2019;SOLDATI et al, 2019;FREITAS et al, 2021a). This survey provides an inventory of butterflies occurring in the Sempre Vivas National Park (SVNP), an area covered by Cerrado and campo rupestre vegetation in the north-central region of Minas Gerais State, Brazil.…”

Borboletas (Lepidoptera, Papilionoidea) em floresta estacional semidecidual do sul do estado de Minas Gerais, Brasil

“…Alguns inventário de borboletas foram realizados em diferentes biomas de Minas Gerais, como o Cerrado próximo aos municípios de Belo Horizonte, Curvelo, Paraopeba, Paracatu (BROWN JUNIOR et al, 1967a;1967b;BROWN JUNIOR, 1972a), no Parque Estadual Serra do Intendente (NERY et al, 2014), na Serra do Cipó (PIRES et al, 2018) e na Área de Proteção Ambiental Serra de São José (HENRIQUES et al, 2019); em Mata Atlântica, nos municípios de Itamonte, Passa Quatro e Virgínia (ZIKÁN et al, 1968), Poços de Caldas (EBERT, 1969), em Muzambinho (ANDRADE et al, 2017), Baependi (Oliveira et al, 2018); além de áreas urbanas (SILVA et al, 2007;SOARES et al, 2012;ARAÚJO et al, 2015) e em áreas de ecotono entre os dois biomas, na Área de Proteção Especial Manancial Cercadinho (SILVA et al, 2012) e Parque Estadual Serra do Rola Moça (SOLDATI et al, 2019).…”

Mesoamerica is a cradle and the Atlantic Forest is a museum of Neotropical butterfly diversity: Insights from the evolution and biogeography of Brassolini (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae)

“…To investigate dispersal patterns across the South American dry diagonal, we kept this area separate. We used distributional maps and observations, not always with primary geographic coordinates, from taxonomic revisions (Bristow 1981, 1982, 1991, Casagrande 2002, Furtado and Campos-Neto 2004, Penz 2008, 2009a, b, Garzón-Orduña and Penz 2009, Penz et al 2017), and also published butterfly inventories in Mesoamerica (DeVries 1983, 1994, Janzen and Hallwachs 2009, Basset et al 2015), Amazonia (Pereira Martins et al 2017), Cerrado (Pinheiro and Emery 2006, Emery et al 2006, Silva et al 2012, Pereira Martins et al 2017, Dickens et al 2019), Caatinga (Zacca and Bravo 2012), and the Atlantic Forest (Santos et al 2011, 2018, Pérez et al 2017, Melo et al 2019, Soldati et al 2019). We call this the presence/absence biogeographical dataset.…”