Combining functional traits and phylogeny to disentangling Amazonian butterfly assemblages on anthropogenic gradients

Abstract

Environmental gradients consist of sequential changes in the physical and structural characteristics of a region. These allow us to follow species responses and tolerances under different habitat conditions. Among them, forest fragmentation and succession comprise the most common examples of forest gradients, where organismal responses require distinct morphological, physiological, and behavioral adaptations. However, environmental changes can impose ecological and evolutionary constraints that act on species traits, as well as on local species assemblies through their phylogenetic history. In this study, we evaluated the differences in species distribution and composition on fruit‐feeding butterfly assemblages along forest fragmentation and succession gradients. We combine functional and phylogenetic methods for determining butterfly assemblages, and inferred species resistance and resilience according to habitat changes in tropical forests. We used a database of 471 fruit‐feeding butterflies of 60 species sampled from different environments in the central Amazon rainforest. A total of 13 functional traits were measured, and a phylogenetic tree was obtained for the sampled species. The trait–environment relationship was analyzed along both forest fragmentation and succession gradients, controlling for phylogenetic signal on species distribution and functional composition when necessary. Several traits presented phylogenetic signal, and phylogeny was also driving butterfly species distribution along the successional gradient. After controlling for phylogeny, individual characteristics related to flight speed (thoracic weight) and anti‐predatory strategies (camouflage) increased in early‐successional forests, with large butterflies (body length) prevailing in primary forests. No clear functional and phylogenetic pattern was identified for the fragmentation gradient. Our results are consistent with the idea that butterflies may be employing distinct functional strategies to attenuate habitat change effects. Larger butterflies, with lower dispersal ability, are preferentially susceptible to local extinctions in the early‐successional environments, mainly when forested habitat and its resources become spatially restricted. In addition, several anti‐predatory strategies related to conspicuous colors may be losing their functionality in open areas, where not being distinctive against the background becomes the primary defense against predation.

The Hidden Side of Diversity: Effects of Imperfect Detection on Multiple Dimensions of Biodiversity

“…We collected at least one specimen of each butterfly species captured in bait traps for subsequent measurement of functional traits. We selected 12 functional traits to characterize functional diversity in each community, including traits related to flight performance, habitat use, and ecological behavior (Table 1) (Chai & Srygley, 1990; Dudley, 2002; Spaniol, Duarte, Mendonça, & Iserhard, 2019). Using the recently proposed phylogeny of Chazot et al (2019) for Nymphalidae, we obtained the phylogenetic relationships among the 35 species of fruit-feeding butterflies recorded in this study.…”

United colours of the city: A review about urbanisation impact on animal colours

“…These changes are expected to alter camouflage and intraspecific communication mediated by animal colours (Endler 1978; Spaniol et al . 2019), resulting in changes in community composition, species behaviour and intraspecific colour. A recent review suggested that novel visual environments that are very different from natural conditions may have demographic effects by altering visual communication and camouflage (Delhey & Peters 2017).…”

Good Things Come in Larger Packages: Size Matters in Neotropical Fruit-Feeding Butterfly Dispersal <sup>†</sup>

“…Accordingly, an increasing effort has been made to understand the conditions and contexts that modulate the dispersal expression [2]. Identifying which life history traits co-vary with dispersal related traits will enable us to make predictions about species responses in the face of environmental changes [3,4]. This is particularly relevant for species inhabiting environments with high deforestation rates, such as the Neotropical Savannah known as the Cerrado [2,5].…”

“…As deforestation increases, the connectivity between forest patches is decreased, which in turn can affect the ability of a species to disperse and to colonize new habitats [4,7]. However, trait-environmental relationships may not be exclusively explained by current ecological processes but can also reflect the evolutionary history shared by different species in ecological communities [15,16].…”

“…However, trait-environmental relationships may not be exclusively explained by current ecological processes but can also reflect the evolutionary history shared by different species in ecological communities [15,16]. Thus, the phylogenetic information, especially when combined with both ecological and functional methods is essential for a more accurate understanding about community assembly [4,17]. The evaluation of phylogenetic signal strength on butterfly traits has been recently incorporated to disentangle butterfly assemblies along spatial gradients in the Amazon forest [4,18].…”