Abstract
Records for butterflies on Elba island in the last 120 years have been summarized and examined. I assessed species occurrence for six periods of twenty years by bibliographic, museum and field data. For five periods data appear complete and species assemblage highly concordant. Nonetheless, a certain evolution of Elba butterflies seems to be occurring. Moreover, I assessed the regression between frequency at sources and frequency on islands among species living on Italian islets and used the residuals as a tendency to be less or more common on islands compared to mainland. By a successive regression, I verified that these residuals are actually related to the number of periods each species has been recorded on Elba. Interestingly, the number of record periods is not correlated with species appearance. I concluded that there is a large core of persistent species and a few species that are occasionally reported on Elba. Such satellite species represent butterflies that are less likely to occupy island biotas and may represent endangered populations.
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Acknowledgements
This study was conducted in collaboration with the Tuscan archipelago National Park. Researches on Elba between 1999–2004 have been funded by the European INTERREG II-III project, researches in 2008 have been funded by the ENEL and Legambiente project “Insieme per la Biodiversità: un santuario per le farfalle nel Parco Nazionale dell’Arcipelago Toscano”. Thanks are also due to Marina Aldi, Marco Dellacasa, Mario Martorella, Chiara Mazzarri, Ivana Piccoli, Massimo Schiavelli, Sergio Segnini, Franco Strumia for trap operation and local management, Luca Bartozzi for facilitating the examination of the Verity collection preserved at the Museo Zoologico “La Specola”, Firenze, Prof. Paolo Parenzan for helping with bibliographic data, Roger Dennis for incessant discussion about island biodiversity and Simone Fattorini and an anonymous referee for giving useful suggestions.
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Dapporto, L. Core and satellite butterfly species on Elba island (Tuscan Archipelago, Italy). A study on persistence based on 120 years of collection data. J Insect Conserv 13, 421–428 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-008-9189-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-008-9189-7