Fruit-feeding butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) of the Área de Proteção Especial Manancial Mutuca, Nova Lima and Species list for the Region of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Abstract

A study of the assembly of fruit-feeding butterflies in the Área de Proteção Especial Manancial Mutuca, Nova Lima, MG was conducted with the goal of inventorying the species of the site. Forty-two traps were used to attract fruit-feeding butterflies, divided between Cerrado (rupestrian field) and riparian vegetation, monthly over one year. 2245 butterflies, which belonged to 63 species, were recorded. Of this total, fourty-eight species were collected in the Cerrado, twenty-one exclusively in this environment, forty-two in riparian forest, fifteen being exclusive to this environment, and twenty-seven species were sampled in both environments. From the total of sampled species, thirty-five were considered rare, eight accessory species, and twenty constant species. Prepona deiphile deiphile (Charaxine) is classified as vulnerable on the Minas Gerais’ list and on the national list of threatened species. The collector curve showed no clear trend to stabilization, suggesting that there are species still not sampled in the study area. Adding the data from field sampling to the information on species occurrence in the literature and in entomological collections, the current number of frugivorous butterflies species for the region of Belo Horizonte is 104. This result foregrounds the importance of APE Mutuca for maintaning a rich fauna of frugivorous butterflies to the area.

Composition and structure of the frugivorous butterfly community (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) at the Serra Azul State Park (PESA), Mato Grosso, Brazil

“…with a larger sampling effort. When compared to other studies developed in the Cerrado (Silva et al 2012(Silva et al , 2015 or predominantly forested areas (Uehara-Prado et al 2007), the richness and/or diversity recorded for the PESA was low, but was higher than the richness/diversity recorded in fragmented areas from other regions in Brazil (Silva et al 2007, Martins et al 2017b.…”

“…A careful evaluation of species abundance in different areas can reveal, for example, changes in the composition and structure of the hostplants. Such information should be investigated in future studies for species such as C. sorana, Hamadryas amphinome (Linnaeus, 1767), H. februa (Hübner, [1823]), H. feronia, Colobura dirce (Linnaeus, 1758), and Opsiphanes invirae (Hübner, 1808), which are considered common and abundant on regional scales (Silva et al 2015), but registered low abundances in the PESA.…”

Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) from the campos rupestres of Serra de São José, Minas Gerais, Brazil

“…Even in small habitats, it is extremely difficult to estimate the total richness of organisms, especially in the case of insects, a megadiverse group (Beutel et al 2017). According to the Jackknife 1 estimator, 72.3% of the species pool was sampled at Serra de São José, higher compared to the 66-68% found by Pereira et al (2017) in Serra do Cipó and by Silva et al (2015) in a Special Protection Area of Nova Lima (Minas Gerais), respectively. Bogiani et al (2012) found 81% of the species estimated by Jackknife 1 in a Cerrado urban area, although only 60 species were recorded using the same two sampling methods and a very similar effort-hour to our study.…”

Climate and plant structure determine the spatiotemporal butterfly distribution on a tropical mountain

“…One of the species restricted to the highest elevation, Zaretis strigosus, is typical of forest canopies, like all species of the genus Zaretis (Willmott & Hall, 2001). Another exclusive species of the highest elevation, Forsterinaria pronophila, had been previously recorded for a fragment of the Atlantic Forest in Minas Gerais (Silva et al, 2015), as well as the Atlantic Forest in the states of Rio de Janeiro (Lamas, 2004) and Rio Grande do Sul (Paz et al, 2014). Thus, the presence of these two species can reinforce the influence the forest has on the highest sampling point in the present study.…”