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© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Introduction: In animals, body size is correlated with many aspects of natural history, such as life span, abundance, dispersal capacity and diet breadth. However, contrasting trends have been reported for the relationship between body size and these ecological traits. Methods: Fruit-feeding butterflies were used to investigate whether body size is correlated with species abundance, dispersal, permanence, and larval diet breadth in a Neotropical savanna in Brazil (Cerrado). We used Blomberg’s K and Phylogenetic Generalized Least Squares models (PGLS) to measure phylogenetic signal strength in species traits and to estimate size–dispersal–diet breadth associations, while also taking shared ancestry into account. Results: 539 individuals from 27 species were captured, and 190 individuals were recaptured, representing a 35% recapture rate. We found body size to be negatively associated with butterfly abundance, and positively associated with dispersal level, distance traveled, number of traps visited, individual permanence, and diet breadth. These results indicate that larger butterflies are more likely to disperse over longer distances. Moreover, larger butterflies have more generalized larval diets, based on the number of host plant families, genera, and phylogenetic diversity of the host plants they consume as larvae. Smaller butterflies rely on fewer resources, which is reflected in their higher survival in small patches and may explain their lower dispersal ability and higher diet specialization. Nevertheless, lower dispersal ability may, if not compensated by large population sizes, threaten small-bodied species inhabiting environments, such as the Cerrado, which have intense deforestation rates. Conclusions: Body size is positively associated with dispersal and diet breadth for the fruit-feeding butterflies collected in this study.

Details

Title
Good Things Come in Larger Packages: Size Matters for Adult Fruit-Feeding Butterfly Dispersal and Larval Diet Breadth
Author
FreireJr, Geraldo B 1 ; Silva, Thayane 2 ; Oliveira, Hernani 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Collier, Chloe 1 ; Rodrigues, Hanna P 2 ; Dias, Joao P 2 ; Santos, Jessie P 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Marini-Filho, Onildo J 5 ; Freitas, André V L 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Smilanich, Angela M 1 ; Dyer, Lee A 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Diniz, Ivone R 2 

 Department of Biology, Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology—EECB, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA; [email protected] (C.C.); [email protected] (A.M.S.); [email protected] (L.A.D.) 
 Departmento de Ecologia, Universidade de Brasília—UnB, Brasília 70910-900, DF, Brazil; [email protected] (T.S.); [email protected] (H.P.R.); [email protected] (J.P.D.); [email protected] (I.R.D.) 
 Departmento de Zoologia, Universidade do Paraná—UFPR, Curitiba 81531-980, PR, Brazil; [email protected] 
 Departmento de Biologia Animal, Universidade Estadual de Campinas—UNICAMP, Campinas 13083-862, SP, Brazil; [email protected] (J.P.S.); [email protected] (A.V.L.F.) 
 Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade—ICMBio, Brasília 70670-350, DF, Brazil; [email protected] 
First page
664
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
14242818
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2612753629
Copyright
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.