Fruit‐Feeding Butterflies from the Atlantic Forests

Study Description

Some nymphalid butterflies obtain their nutrients from fermented fruits or plant saps. They compose a guild known as “fruit‐feeding butterflies,” a recognized biological indicator. We gathered a huge data set of fruit‐feeding butterfly communities in a recent paper for Ecology. The data set contains 7,062 records of 279 species from 122 locations, a major effort to fill the knowledge gap about the diversity and distribution of these butterflies in the Atlantic Forest biome. We expect its content to support the better implementation of conservation initiatives and studies across a great variety of spatial scales, with focus on the understanding of multiple ecological processes.

Male of Catonephele numilia (Biblidinae: Catonephelini), a fruit‐feeding butterfly species. Photo credit: André Freitas.

Diaethria candrena (Biblidinae: Callicorini), a fruit‐feeding butterfly commonly known as “80,” landed near waterfalls in Foz do Iguaçu National Park, Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná, Brazil. Photo credit: Augusto Rosa.

Male of Epiphile orea (Biblidinae: Epiphilini) landed on the ground, near a Brazilian conservation unit in the municipality of São Bento do Sapucaí, São Paulo, Brazil. Photo credit: Augusto Rosa.

Hypna clytemnestra butterfly (Charaxinae: Anaeini) sighted in a dirt road beside a forest fragment in the municipality of Caçapava, São Paulo, Brazil. Photo credit: Augusto Rosa.

These photographs illustrate the article “Atlantic butterflies: a data set of fruit‐feeding butterfly communities from the Atlantic forests” by Jessie Pereira dos Santos, André Victor Lucci Freitas, Keith Spalding Brown Jr., Junia Yasmin Oliveira Carreira, Patrícia Eyng Gueratto, Augusto Henrique Batista Rosa, Giselle Martins Lourenço, Gustavo Mattos Accacio, Márcio Uehara‐Prado, Cristiano Agra Iserhard, Aline Richter, Karine Gawlinski, Helena Piccoli Romanowski, Nicolás Oliveira Mega, Melissa Oliveira Teixeira, Alfred Moser, Danilo Bandini Ribeiro, Poliana Felix Araujo, Bruno Karol Cordeiro Filgueiras, Douglas Henrique Alves Melo, Inara Roberta Leal, Marina do Vale Beirão, Sérvio Pontes Ribeiro, Elaine Cristina Barbosa Cambuí, Rodrigo Nogueira de Vasconcelos, Márcio Zikán Cardoso, Marlon Paluch, Roberto Rezende Greve, Júlio Cesar Voltolini, Mauro Galetti, André Luis Regolin, Thadeu Sobral‐Souza, and Milton Cezar Ribeiro published in Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2507