Urbanization rates are increasing worldwide; therefore, urban and semi-urban ecosystems are the focus of various studies that explore their importance for biodiversity conservation. In the order Lepidoptera high species diversity has been observed in areas with distinct levels of disturbance. In Ecuador, most efforts to study the diversity of butterflies have been concentrated in protected natural areas, whereas studies in semi-urban or urban areas are limited. In this study, we measured the diversity of diurnal Lepidoptera in two semi-urban areas, in southern Ecuador. We visited these areas during the dry season, in the hours of peak butterfly activity, and recorded the species and abundances of each. We estimated relative abundances, evenness, and beta diversity to characterize butterfly assemblages. We found high abundance and richness of Lepidoptera species and low similarities between the two semi-urban areas (Jaccard index = 0.21). Highest species richness was observed in the most heterogeneous area in terms of vegetation composition, owing to the type of management that it receives. Four species represented 50% of the total abundance observed in both sites, and various singletons were registered. This pattern of dominance is characteristic of disturbed areas, where generalist species adapt easily to anthropic environments. However, we also found relatively high richness and abundance of the members of the tribe Ithomiini, which are mostly present in primary forests. Our findings highlight the importance of semi-urban areas for conservation of butterfly diversity and the crucial role of proper management of anthropic areas to preserve biodiversity in this changing world.

We provide notes on the natural history and images of the immature stages of six butterfly species inhabiting west Ecuadorian dry forest, including Magneuptychia libye, Memphis artacaena, Scada zemira, Opsiphanes cassina fabricii, Heliconius erato cyrbia and Dryas iulia moderata (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae). Five of these species have no previously published life history information from this region and habitat, and one species is an endemic. We report two new generic host plant records, Hieronyma (Euphorbiaceae) for Memphis, and Piresia (Poaceae) for Magneuptychia. Eggs or caterpillars of all species were collected in primary forest and reared to adult in the laboratory. The study was carried out in the Bosque Seco Lalo Loor Reserve located in western Ecuador, from June through August 2013, and was part of a capacity-building program to train local people in butterfly research, which included collection and rearing components.

We compared the performance of three common techniques for sampling butterflies in order to better understand any bias associated with each method. This information is still scarce for the Neotropics where butterfly diversity reaches a peak. These techniques included use of hand nets, carrion traps with fermented shrimp, and fruit traps with fermented bananas. We examined which taxonomic groups were sampled by each technique and determined the intra-annual and inter-annual (two continuous years) differences in the collection of butterflies from each approach. Surveys of butterflies were taken every 2 months, in dry and wet seasons, over a 2-year period, and were carried out in two forests (one wet and one dry) in western Ecuador. A total of 2289 butterflies of 231 species were collected. Hand-netting collected the most species (57% and 60% of total species in the dry and the wet forest, respectively), followed by carrion traps (24% and 23%), and then fruit traps (19% and 16%). Methods differed with respect to the butterfly species they collected most frequently. Moreover, each sampling technique resulted in significant differences in species composition across seasons and years. Because our sampling techniques differed in their performance, our study suggests that implementing all the methods together can improve estimates of species diversity and result in more accurate characterization of butterfly communities. While budget and logistics might constraint the utilization of multiple techniques, minimally we recommend using both carrion and fruit baits to alleviate the bias of each bait.

Studies of altitudinal and latitudinal gradients have identified links between the evolution of insect flight morphology, landscape structure and microclimate. Although lowland tropical rainforests offer steeper shifts in conditions between the canopy and the understorey, this vertical gradient has received far less attention. Butterflies, because of their great phenotypic plasticity, are excellent models to study selection pressures that mould flight morphology. We examined data collected over 5 years on 64 Nymphalidae butterflies in the Ecuadorian Chocó rainforest. We used phylogenetic methods to control for similarity resulting from common ancestry, and explore the relationships between species stratification and flight morphology. We hypothesized that species should show morphological adaptations related to differing micro-environments, associated with canopy and understorey. We found that butterfly species living in each stratum presented significantly different allometric slopes. Furthermore, a preference for the canopy was significantly associated with low wing area to thoracic volume ratios and high wing aspect ratios, but not with the relative distance to the wing centroid, consistent with extended use of fast flapping flight for canopy butterflies and slow gliding for the understorey. Our results suggest that microclimate differences in vertical gradients are a key factor in generating morphological diversity in flying insects.