A global phylogeny of butterflies reveals their evolutionary history, ancestral hosts and biogeographic origins.

Butterflies are a diverse and charismatic insect group that are thought to have evolved with plants and dispersed throughout the world in response to key geological events. However, these hypotheses have not been extensively tested because a comprehensive phylogenetic framework and datasets for butterfly larval hosts and global distributions are lacking. We sequenced 391 genes from nearly 2,300 butterfly species, sampled from 90 countries and 28 specimen collections, to reconstruct a new phylogenomic tree of butterflies representing 92% of all genera.

Evolutionary trade-offs between male secondary sexual traits revealed by a phylogeny of the hyperdiverse tribe Eumaeini (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae).

Male butterflies in the hyperdiverse tribe Eumaeini possess an unusually complex and diverse repertoire of secondary sexual characteristics involved in pheromone production and dissemination. Maintaining multiple sexually selected traits is likely to be metabolically costly, potentially resulting in trade-offs in the evolution of male signals. However, a phylogenetic framework to test hypotheses regarding the evolution and maintenance of male sexual traits in Eumaeini has been lacking.

Atlantic butterflies: a data set of fruit-feeding butterfly communities from the Atlantic forests.

Butterflies are one of the best-known insect groups, and they have been the subject of numerous studies in ecology and evolution, especially in the tropics. Much attention has been given to the fruit-feeding butterfly guild in biodiversity conservation studies, due to the relative ease with which taxa may be identified and specimens sampled using bait traps. However, there remain many uncertainties about the macroecological and biogeographical patterns of butterflies in tropical ecosystems.

Winter is coming: Diapause in the subtropical swallowtail butterfly Euryades corethrus (Lepidoptera, Papilionidae) is triggered by the shortening of day length and reinforced by low temperatures.

Diapause is modulated by genetic responses to some environmental cues. The most common stimulus to trigger diapause is photoperiod, but temperature and humidity can also be important. Subtropical grasslands insects are overexposed to seasonality and can use diapause as strategy to overcome harsh conditions, avoiding freezing winter temperatures and drought summer conditions.

Monitoring Temporal Variation to Assess Changes in the Structure of Subtropical Atlantic Forest Butterfly Communities.

The study of fauna through long-term surveys is important in unveiling how temporal patterns shape the structure of communities in tropical habitats. The butterfly assemblage of the subtropical Atlantic Forest may be considered highly diverse and shows changes in diversity and composition over time, highlighting the importance of long-term inventories. This work assessed temporal diversity patterns in the distribution and composition of butterfly assemblages in an Atlantic Forest site in southern Brazil using combined data from three years of standardized sampling with entomological nets, increasing the knowledge on this group in the Neotropics for monitoring and conservation.