Atlantic butterflies: a data set of fruit‐feeding butterfly communities from the Atlantic forests

Abstract

Butterflies are one of the best‐known insect groups, and they have been the subject of numerous studies in ecology and evolution, especially in the tropics. Much attention has been given to the fruit‐feeding butterfly guild in biodiversity conservation studies, due to the relative ease with which taxa may be identified and specimens sampled using bait traps. However, there remain many uncertainties about the macroecological and biogeographical patterns of butterflies in tropical ecosystems. In the present study, we gathered information about fruit‐feeding butterfly species in local communities from the Atlantic Forests of South America. The ATLANTIC BUTTERFLIES data set, which is part of ATLANTIC SERIES data papers, results from a compilation of 145 unpublished inventories and 64 other references, including articles, theses, and book chapters published from 1949 to 2018. In total, the data set contains 7,062 records (presence) of 279 species of fruit‐feeding butterflies identified with taxonomic certainty, from 122 study locations. The Satyrini is the tribe with highest number of species (45%) and records (30%), followed by Brassolini, with 13% of species and 12.5% of records. The 10 most common species correspond to 14.2% of all records. This data set represents a major effort to compile inventories of fruit‐feeding butterfly communities, filling a knowledge gap about the diversity and distribution of these butterflies in the Atlantic Forest. We hope that the present data set can provide guidelines for future studies and planning of new inventories of fruit‐feeding butterflies in this biome. The information presented here also has potential use in studies across a great variety of spatial scales, from local and landscape levels to macroecological research and biogeographical research. We expect that such studies be very important for the better implementation of conservation initiatives, and for understanding the multiple ecological processes that involve fruit‐feeding butterflies as biological indicators. No copyright restrictions apply to the use of this data set. Please cite this Data paper when using the current data in publications or teaching events.

Effects of landscape modification on species richness patterns of fruit‐feeding butterflies in Brazilian Atlantic Forest

“…However, most species records in our dataset pertain to local communities sampled during the last 20 years, which endorses synchrony with the landscape metrics (Figure ). More details about the dataset can be found in Santos et al (). We modelled the distribution of the 146 fruit‐feeding butterfly species represented by at least 10 occurrence points.…”

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)

“…We delineated bioregions using geo-referenced occurrences of extant Brassolini, rather than defining areas based on geological or other sources of data. We retrieved 7,255 geo-referenced occurrence points identified at the species level, of which 6,378 points came from GBIF (https://gbif.org; retrieved on 21 st January 2019) and 881 points from the ATLANTIC BUTTERFLIES dataset (Santos et al 2018). We uploaded the geo-referenced occurrences to the web application Infomap Bioregions (Edler et al 2017) at http://bioregions.mapequation.org/.…”

“…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.…”

“…We delineated bioregions ( sensu Vilhena & Antonelli, 2015) using geo-referenced occurrence points of Brassolini identified with taxonomic certainty at the species level, of which 6,378 points came from GBIF (https://gbif.org; retrieved on 21 st January 2019) and 881 points from the ATLANTIC BUTTERFLIES dataset (Santos et al ., 2018). Both databases follow the current taxonomic understanding of Brassolini, thus, we did not encounter dubious species names.…”

Butterflies on the dry edge of the Atlantic Forest: water availability determines community structure at the Northern limit of Atlantic Forest

“…In fact, a recent data set compiled by Santos et al . (2018) shows that communities of fruit‐feeding butterflies in the Northern Atlantic forest are less rich when compared to Southern communities. On average, north‐eastern sites harbour 48 species (min = 31, max = 62), while southeast ones harbour an average of 59 species (min = 15, max = 121).…”