Vertical and Temporal Patterns of Biodiversity of Fruit-Feeding Butterflies in a Tropical Forest in Uganda

Abstract

Quick surveys are often used by conservation biologists to assess biodiversity. In tropical forests, fruit-feeding butterflies are a convenient indicator group because they can be readily trapped and are comparatively easy to identify. However, studies carried out in Costa Rica and Ecuador have revealed that long-term sampling is needed to estimate biodiversity accurately. Furthermore, almost half of the biodiversity of fruit-feeding butterflies in the neotropics was found to be in the canopy. Short term sampling in the understory can, therefore, lead to inaccurate estimates of species richness and worse, to poorly informed conservation decisions. Comparable to the studies in South America, we performed a long-term trapping study of the same guild of butterflies in the understory and canopy of Kibale Forest in Uganda, to describe temporal and vertical patterns of biodiversity. We caught 32,308 individuals of 94 species over three years. About 14% of these species could be categorized as canopy specialists and 68% as understory specialists. Temporal variation was extensive and did not follow a clear seasonal pattern. This is the first study in an African forest with continuous sampling of fruit-feeding butterflies over multiple years and in both canopy and understory.

Relative contribution of neutral and deterministic processes in shaping fruit‐feeding butterfly assemblages in Afrotropical forests

“…BOB (6°25′N 2°40′W) covers about 50 km 2 and is mainly managed for timber production. A similar fruit-feeding butterfly dataset (Molleman, Kop, Brakefield, De Vries, & Zwaan, 2006) from Kibale National Park (KIB) was used to compare the results, and neutral theory model parameter values as the theoretical metacommunity is extended from "Ghana" to "Africa." KIB (0°35′N 20°39′W) is located in western Uganda and at least 3,500 km from BOB and BIA.…”

“…In total, the quantitative sampling protocol described generated a total of 1,974 and 1,812 trap-days in BIA and BOB, respectively. For details of the experimental setup in KIB, we refer to Molleman et al (2006), which did not substantially differ from the setup in Ghana. Specimens were identified to species and grouped into respective taxonomic units (putative species groups, genera, subfamilies) following the proposed higher-level classification for Nymphalidae by (Larsen, 2005).…”

“…A total of 7,556 individuals representing 154 butterfly species were captured from the two locations in Ghana ( belonging to 94 species were trapped in KIB (Molleman et al, 2006). BIA was by far the most species rich (139), despite being the community with the fewest sampled individuals.…”

Flying between raindrops: Strong seasonal turnover of several Lepidoptera groups in lowland rainforests of Mount Cameroon

“…The highest species richness of particular tropical lepidopteran groups was detected in different seasons: high-dry season for Sphingidae (Cruz-Neto et al, 2011;Owen, 1969), geometrids (Hilt et al, 2007) and butterflies (Aduse-Poku et al, 2012;DeVries et al, 2012;Grøtan et al, 2014Grøtan et al, , 2012, transition from wet to dry seasons for butterflies (Valtonen et al, 2013), and wet season for butterflies (Checa, Rodriguez, Willmott, & Liger, 2014;DeVries et al, 1997;Devries & Walla, 2001). No specific seasonal patterns of species richness were revealed for Sphingidae (Beck & Linsenmair, 2006), Arctiinae (Hilt et al, 2007), butterflies (Larsen, Riley, & Cornes, 1979;Molleman, Kop, Brakefield, Vries, & Zwaan, 2006;Owen & Chanter, 1972), pyraloids (Fiedler & Schulze, 2004;Schulze & Fiedler, 2003), and macro-heterocerans (Tikoca et al, 2016). An overwhelming majority of these group-specific patterns came from single-taxon studies carried out in different tropical localities or even areas, often with different seasonality.…”

“…Publications on the temporal dynamics of Afrotropical Lepidoptera are still relatively scarce and mostly focused on butterflies only (e.g., Owen & Chanter, 1972;Larsen et al, 1979;Molleman et al, 2006;Namu, Githaiga, Kioko, Ndegwa, & Hauser, 2008;Aduse-Poku et al, 2012;Valtonen et al, 2013; but see Owen, 1969;Axmacher, Kühne, & Vohland, 2008). Recently, it was predicted that the global change will strongly affect the seasonality of rainfall in the tropics during the next century, with expected strong changes in the amount of precipitation in equatorial Africa (Feng, Porporato, & Rodriguez-Iturbe, 2013).…”