Frugivorous butterflies (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae) as a habitat quality indicator in Cerrado urban fragment

Abstract

The environmental monitoring programs used to assess the quality of the habitats are often common to insects, mainly as frugivorous butterflies, as easily accessible biological indicators. These have ample availability of information, an easy to perform and low cost study method, in addition to responding easily to environmental changes, making it an efficient tool in environmental diagnosis. The way or objective of this work was to inventory as frugivorous butterflies in two different points, edge and center of an urban fragment belonging to the Universidade Federal de Rondonópolis, state of Mato Grosso, using as an environmental indicator. As a hypothesis, it was believed to detect differences in species richness, the amount of composition and composition between two areas. A sampling was carried out between the months of February and May 2019, using 10 Van Someren-Rydon weapons, of which six were distributed at the edges and four in the center (interior) of the fragment. Take place as trapped collections once a week lasting three days at each event. 105 individuals belonging to nine species of Nymphalidae were captured, respectively, as subfamilies: Biblidinae (71), Satyrinae (31) and Charaxinae (03). There was no significant difference between species richness, quantity and composition in the edge area and in the center of the fragment.

Keywords

• conservation
• edge effect
• inventory