Biological aspects and movements of neotropical fruit‐feeding butterfies.

Abstract

The patterns of insect movement are the cumulate product of many individual decisions and can be shaped by the way

morphology and behaviour interacts with landscape structure and composition. Hence, the ongoing process of habitat frag- mentation increases the distance among suitable habitats and changes those in such a way that it may favour some movement

behaviour. Our study described some biological traits (sex ratio, age structure and individual permanence in a population), as well as the movements of fruit-feeding butterfies along the horizontal dimension (among habitats: forest interior, natural forest transition — ecotone and anthropogenic forest transition — edge) and the vertical dimension (between canopy and

understory). We sampled butterfies monthly over 1 year in the Atlantic rainforest, South-eastern Brazil, following a stand- ardized design using bait traps. We found that sex ratio was male biased for fve out of the six more abundant species and

the age structure showed an increase in recruitment of new individuals in the dry season followed by a noticeable aging of

the populations in the wet season. In general, our results revealed an aggregated spatial distribution, in which few individu- als travelled long distances while most individuals were recaptured in the same trap, suggesting that all studied habitats

currently provide the necessary conditions for the maintenance of butterfy populations, favouring fewer movements and narrow home ranges for both sexes and species. Conservation of a set of heterogeneous habitats it is especially important for the maintenance of sedentary butterfies and of those that move large distances.