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Maximized sampling of butterflies to detect temporal changes in tropical communities

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Abstract

There are few papers describing long-term fluctuations and general patterns of temporal diversity in butterfly assemblages in the Neotropical region. The present paper presents a long-term study on the variation in richness and composition of butterflies in a fragment of semi-deciduous forest in Southeastern Brazil, and examines the viability of using maximized butterfly transect counts as a methodology to rapidly and adequately access the local characteristics of butterfly communities. Based on the eight annual standard lists, 518 species in six butterfly families were recorded, representing 74 % of the total butterfly fauna known from the study site. Hesperiidae was the richest family (248 species), followed by Nymphalidae (154), Lycaenidae (49), Riodinidae (29), Pieridae (26), and Papilionidae (12). The accumulation curves show that 8 years of sampling were not enough to result in stable species totals for all butterfly families, especially Hesperiidae and Lycaenidae, which are still increasing in number of species. A great similarity in species composition was observed among all the years (54 %). Comparing the similarity between two standard lists at different time intervals (from 1 to 8 years), a clear pattern of increasing dissimilarity was observed in most families. Our results show that the maximized sampling method is effective in revealing temporal patterns of diversity across several years and could be valuable in monitoring temporal variation in butterfly assemblages for conservation purposes, since the obtained standard lists can be successfully compared to temporal patterns over large periods of time.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Fundação José Pedro de Oliveira for providing logistic support for field work in the Santa Genebra forest Reserve. We also thank Leonardo Ré Jorge, Lucas Kaminski, Danilo B. Ribeiro and Keith Willmott for suggestions in a previous version of the manuscript. CAI was supported by the Brazilian Research Council—Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) until September/2011 and now is supported by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, 2011/08433-8). AVLF was supported by the FAPESP grant 04/05269-9, and the Brazilian CNPq (300282/2008-7). This publication is part of the RedeLep “Rede Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação de Lepidópteros” SISBIOTA-Brasil/CNPq (563332/2010-7), and of the BIOTA-FAPESP Program (2011/50225-3).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Biologia Animal and Museu de Zoologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, CP 6109, Campinas, São Paulo State, 13083-970, Brazil

    Cristiano Agra Iserhard, Keith Spalding Brown Jr. & André Victor Lucci Freitas

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  1. Cristiano Agra Iserhard
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  2. Keith Spalding Brown Jr.
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  3. André Victor Lucci Freitas
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Correspondence to Cristiano Agra Iserhard.

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Iserhard, C.A., Brown, K.S. & Freitas, A.V.L. Maximized sampling of butterflies to detect temporal changes in tropical communities. J Insect Conserv 17, 615–622 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-013-9546-z

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