Abstract
Interest in forest regeneration has increased as secondary forests in regeneration process are cited as the forests of the future. However, remaining forests are subjected to chronic anthropogenic disturbances, which may reorganize tropical biodiversity. This paper investigates the recovery of fruit-feeding butterfly assemblages following slash-and-burn agriculture in the Caatinga dry forest, assessing the roles that chronic disturbances, tree species richness and biomass play in their taxonomic and functional recovery during secondary succession. Butterflies were recorded monthly across old-growth forest stands and areas previously subjected to slash-and-burn agriculture, and with differing times since abandonment. While there was a high degree of similarity in community-level attributes among regenerating forests of different ages, secondary and old-growth forests supported relatively distinct assemblages, both taxonomically and functionally. As expected, chronic disturbance, forest biomass and trees species richness were excellent predictors of taxonomic and functional changes. Specifically, large-bodied and canopy-inhabiting butterflies reached higher abundances in more disturbed habitats, while those ocellus-bearing species that fly in the understory and feed on monocot as larvae responded negatively to disturbance, but benefited from increased forest biomass and tree species richness. Our findings suggest that although regenerating secondary forests can recover values of community-level attributes of fruit-feeding butterflies similar to those of old-growth forests, chronic anthropogenic disturbances across the landscape may be selecting only specific ecological groups that are tolerant to adverse conditions.
Implications for insect conservation
Chronic disturbance can taxonomically and functionally alter butterfly assemblages across forest regeneration and consequently impact their ecological functions.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the ICMBio for allowing us to work in Catimbau National Park and landowners for giving us permission to work on their properties. This study was supported by the ‘Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico’ (CNPq, Processes PELD 403770/2012-2 and “Edital Universal” 470480/2013-0) and “Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco” (FACEPE, process APQ-0738-2.05/12, APQ 0138-2.05/14, and PRONEX APQ 0138-2.05/14). This study is part of DHAM’s PhD Thesis at the “Programa de Pós Graduação em Biologia Animal” (PPGBA-UFPE). DHAM acknowledges the “Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior” (CAPES, Finance Code 001) for a PhD Scholarship. BKCF acknowledges the FACEPE for a Post-doc Grant (BFP-0141-2.05/21), and AVLF, MT and IRL for Productivity Grants (Processes 304291/2020-0, 310228/2016-6 and 305611/2014-3, respectively). AVLF also acknowledges support from the “Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo” (FAPESP 2013/50297-0 and 2021/03868-8) and from the National Science Foundation (NSF DEB-1256742). This publication is part of the “RedeLep – Rede Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Lepidópteros”: SISBIOTA-Brasil/CNPq (Grant 563332/2010-7).
Funding
This study was supported by the ‘Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico’ (CNPq, Processes PELD 403770/2012-2 and “Edital Universal” 470480/2013-0) and “Fundação de Amparo à Ciência e Tecnologia do Estado de Pernambuco” (FACEPE, process APQ-0738-2.05/12, APQ 0138-2.05/14, and PRONEX APQ 0138-2.05/14).
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DHAM, BKCF and IRL originally formulated the idea, DHAM and AVLF developed methodology, DHAM and BKCF conducted fieldwork, DHAM and BKCF performed statistical analyses, and DHAM, IRL, MT, AVLF and BKCF wrote the manuscript.
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Melo, D.H.A., Freitas, A.V.L., Tabarelli, M. et al. Resilient fruit-feeding butterfly assemblages across a Caatinga dry forest chronosequence submitted to chronic anthropogenic disturbance. J Insect Conserv 27, 467–477 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-023-00470-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-023-00470-2