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Collections of butterflies from the Krakatau Islands made from 1982-85 are discussed. Twenty species new to the island group and many new records to particular islands imply that the butterfly fauna is far from equilibrium. The colonization trends are discussed in relation to the habitats available, and conservation measures are suggested.
Collections of butterflies from the Krakatau Islands made from 1982-85 are discussed. Twenty species new to the island group and many new records to particular islands imply that the butterfly fauna is far from equilibrium. The colonization trends are discussed in relation to the habitats available, and conservation measures are suggested.
An examination of cases of turnover in animal species on the Krakataus since 1883, particularly vertebrates, supports the findings of plant ecologists that very little, if any, turnover is stochastic. Successional, rather than equilibrium turnover is still occurring in all animal groups for which analyses can be made; for no group of animals is there evidence that an equilibrium of species number has been achieved, although for resident land birds there are indications that this is now imminent. Approach to equilibrium is not uniform; the colonization curves for resident land birds, reptiles, cockroaches and nymphalid and hesperiid Lepidoptera, as examples, have flattened markedly in the past 50 years, whereas numbers of species of land molluscs and many other insect groups are still increasing at a rate similar to that in the first half century since 1883. The period of the beginning of forest formation (1908-21) was the time when immigration reached a peak, and the period of canopy closure (1921-33) was the time of highest extinction rates. Successful colonists, over a range of animal groups, appear to be species with wide distributions and broad ecological tolerances. There is indirect evidence that successional processes have precluded colonization by several animal groups present in the mainland pool because of unavailability of their preferred habitat, and it is suggested that the effective available pool, as opposed to the theoretical one, changes in size and species complement as succession proceeds on the target islands. We believe that the brief open-habitat phase was too short for the establishment of several animal groups that were available in the pool. Animals of mature forest are, in general, absent as the archipelago’s forests are still relatively impoverished and early successional. Anak Krakatau, in general terms, offers an analogy with the early decades of colonization after 1883. The role of animals in the first stages of forest diversification from casuarina woodland has been monitored on this island, and an ash-lava aeolian ecosystem based on an allochthonous energy source was identified, which parallels similar systems on volcanic substrates in Sicily, the Canaries and, particularly, the island of Hawaii.
Insect populations including butterflies are declining worldwide, and they are becoming an urgent conservation priority in many regions. Understanding which butterfly species migrate is critical to planning for their conservation, because management actions for migrants need to be coordinated across time and space. Yet, while migration appears to be widespread among butterflies, its prevalence, as well as its taxonomic and geographic distribution are poorly understood. The study of insect migration is hampered by their small size and the difficulty of tracking individuals over long distances. Here we review the literature on migration in butterflies, one of the best‐known insect groups. We find that nearly 600 butterfly species show evidence of migratory movements. Indeed, the rate of ‘discovery’ of migratory movements in butterflies suggests that many more species might in fact be migratory. Butterfly migration occurs across all families, in tropical as well as temperate taxa; Nymphalidae has more migratory species than any other family (275 species), and Pieridae has the highest proportion of migrants (13%; 133 species). Some 13 lines of evidence have been used to ascribe migration status in the literature, but only a single line of evidence is available for 92% of the migratory species identified, with four or more lines of evidence available for only 10 species – all from the Pieridae and Nymphalidae. Migratory butterflies occur worldwide, although the geographic distribution of migration in butterflies is poorly resolved, with most data so far coming from Europe, USA, and Australia. Migration is much more widespread in butterflies than previously realised – extending far beyond the well‐known examples of the monarch Danaus plexippus and the painted lady Vanessa cardui – and actions to conserve butterflies and insects in general must account for the spatial dependencies introduced by migratory movements.
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