Seasonal Diversity of Butterflies and Its Relationship with Woody-Plant Resources Availability in an Ecuadorian Tropical Dry Forest

Abstract

Understanding the seasonal community structures of highly diverse animal taxa and how they interact with plants is necessary for efficient conservation efforts such as rapid biodiversity inventory protocols and monitoring programs. This knowledge is particularly important for seasonal tropical dry forests, which are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. We sampled a seasonal tropical dry forest over the course of a year to determine the period of greatest butterfly richness. Additionally, we evaluated availability of potential woody plant trophic resources (flower buds, blossoms, unripe fruits, ripe fruits, and foliage) in relation to butterfly richness and community composition. Twenty of the 22 species collected showed flight activity between January-April (rainy season), coinciding with maximum plant resources availability. Lepidoptera species richness correlated positively with amount of ripe fruits and foliage. Community composition changes among sample dates involved losses and gains, and not turnovers, of species. These shifts correlate with seasonal oscillations in the variety of ripe fruits and the amount of foliage. Our results indicate that rapid inventory protocols may be applied in the period of February-March; species richness monitoring can be restricted to the rainy season (saving labor and economic costs); and ripe fruits and foliage may be suitable candidates for temporal plant-butterfly interaction surveillance.

Design matters: An evaluation of the impact of small man-made forest clearings on tropical bats using a before-after-control-impact design

“…Tropical assemblages exhibit profound spatiotemporal variation in response to resource availability (Haugaasen and Peres, 2007;Beja et al, 2010;Castro and Espinosa, 2015).…”

Season‐modulated responses of Neotropical bats to forest fragmentation

“…In the tropics, seasonality is marked not by a difference in temperature but by a difference in precipitation (MacArthur, ). Differences in precipitation between seasons affect plant production, causing oscillations in resource availability, which in turn affects the presence and abundance of animal species (Avila‐Cabadilla et al., ; Beja et al., ; Castro & Espinosa, ; Ramos Pereira, Marques, & Palmeirim, ). In fragmented landscapes, natural fluctuations in resource availability can be altered at forest edges (Ewers & Banks‐Leite, ) and in the human‐modified matrix (Chazdon et al., ) as a result of different microclimatic conditions.…”

Inventario Preliminar de la Clase Insecta en la Reserva Ecológica Arenillas, Ecuador

“…El inventario preliminar de la clase Insecta registró un total de 122 especies, 93 géneros 40 familias y 11 órdenes, resultantes de unificar las 111 especies registradas en este estudio con las listas encontradas en dos publicaciones, la primera con seis especies (Ministerio del Ambiente del Ecuador, 2015) y la segunda con 22 especies (Castro & Espinosa, 2015). De este inventario integrado se destaca que, este estudio reporta 95 especies como registros nuevos para la Reserva Arenillas.…”

“…A pesar de la relevancia de esta área protegida, en las bases de datos revisadas se han encontrado solo dos publicaciones sobre la diversidad de insectos en la Reserva Arenillas, en una se reportaron seis especies de insectos (Ministerio del Ambiente del Ecuador, 2015) y en la otra se registraron 22 especies solo del orden Lepidoptera (Castro y Espinosa, 2015). La finalidad de este estudio fue realizar un inventario preliminar de la clase Insecta, analizar su composición taxonómica y los gremios tróficos, para contribuir al conocimiento de esta clase del phylum Arthropoda en la Reserva Ecológica Arenillas.…”