ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION OF BUTTERFLIES IN A TRANSFORMED TROPICAL LANDSCAPE

Abstract

The future of Southeast Asia’s many forest dependent butterflies depends on how we manage populations in the region’s transformed tropical landscapes. Using Singapore as a model system, we show a slowdown in butterfly extinctions in the past 25 years. Our long-term dataset of 281 species showed that mature forests are still key for butterflies, especially for rare species but forest fragments hold some habitat specialized species. In terms of flower use, we found that 43% of feeding observations by butterflies in forested sites were on non-native flowers. Yet, flower specialists used significantly higher proportions of native flower species in their diet than flower generalists and tended to be forest dependent. Using capture-mark-release protocol, we showed that dispersal distances of recaptured species in forests was significantly greater than in the urban habitats. Finally, our host plant enrichment experiment for Pachliopta aristolochiae species demonstrated a utilization-survival