Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) of an urban park in northeastern Brazil

Abstract

Despite being one of the groups most well studied in Brazil, the butterfly fauna of northeastern Brazil, especially north of the mouth of São Francisco River, is poorly known. The aim of this study was to inventory the butterfly fauna in a remnant of Atlantic Forest in the state of Pernambuco as a contribution to understanding the distribution of these insects. The study was carried out in a 384.7 hectares fragment of Parque Estadual Dois Irmãos, in the metropolitan region of Recife. The butterflies were sampled monthly with insect nets from August 2011 to July 2012 and from January to August 2016. Additional records were obtained from two entomological collections and from two previous visits to the area in July 2003 and August 2006. A total of 273 species was sampled in 464 hours, with an additional 15 species recorded from the Entomological Collections, totaling 288 butterfly species recorded. The richest family was Hesperiidae (108 species), followed by Nymphalidae (80), Lycaenidae (43) Riodinidae (37), Pieridae (16) and Papilionidae (4). The fauna was dominated by generalist species with a broad geographical distribution, many of them commonly found on open areas, forest edges and secondary vegetation. Roeberella lencates (Hewitson, 1875) and Pheles atricolor atricolor (Butler, 1871) (Riodinidae) represent new records for northeastern Brazil.

Urban forest fragments as unexpected sanctuaries for the rare endemic ghost butterfly from the Atlantic forest

“…It is possible that relatively large forest remnant in cities could be sustaining the last surviving populations of this species. There are reports of the ghost butterfly occurring in forest fragments near urban areas in larger cities elsewhere, but further surveys are needed to confirm their occurrence in larger urban forest fragments (Melo, Duarte, Mielke, Robbins, & Freitas, ).…”

“…There are reports of the ghost butterfly occurring in forest fragments near urban areas in larger cities elsewhere, but further surveys are needed to confirm their occurrence in larger urban forest fragments (Melo, Duarte, Mielke, Robbins, & Freitas, 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.…”

Butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea) from a Fragment of Atlantic Forest in the Southern Bahia State

“…A pioneer study with Lepidoptera was carried out in the northeastern Atlantic Forest in the middle of the XX century (caRdoSo 1949), and the fauna of butterflies in the north of the San Francisco river is best known because of the inventories compiled in Alagoas, Pernambuco and Paraíba (caRdoSo 1949;keSSelRinG & ebeRt 1982;Paluch et al 2011;Melo et al 2019). In the Atlantic Forest in Bahia the inventories were drawn up only in the Recôncavo region and north coast.…”

“…This research has been based on an extensive literature review, including Palo-JR (2017), and on consultation with relevant experts and the scientific collection from Laboratório de Sistemática e Conservação de Insetos (LASCI) Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, Cruz das Almas, Bahia, where the material was deposited. The classification and nomenclature follow laMaS (2004), modified after by waRRen et al (Paluch et al 2016) and Parque Dois Irmãos, Recife, PE (PDI) (Melo et al 2019).…”