Trade-offs for butterfly alpha and beta diversity in human-modified landscapes and tropical rainforests.

The accelerating expansion of human populations and associated economic activity across the globe have made maintaining large, intact natural areas increasingly challenging. The difficulty of preserving large intact landscapes in the presence of growing human populations has led to a growing emphasis on landscape approaches to biodiversity conservation with a complementary strategy focused on improving conservation in human-modified landscapes. This, in turn, is leading to intense debate about the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes and approaches to better support biodiversity in those landscapes.

Butterflies (Lepidoptera) of Guyana: A compilation of records.

An examination of the available literature shows that a total of 1,205 butterfly species from 457 genera, 22 subfamilies and six families have been recorded in Guyana. Specimens that are unidentified above genus level and those that require further verification are excluded from this checklist. Although investigations have been conducted in all of the natural regions and administrative regions of Guyana, additional research is required on a number of aspects including species biology and behavioral ecology.

Tropical Rainforest and Human-Modified Landscapes Support Unique Butterfly Communities That Differ in Abundance and Diversity.

Tropical forests account for at least 50% of documented diversity, but anthropogenic activities are converting forests to agriculture and urban areas at an alarming rate, with potentially strong effects on insect abundance and diversity. However, the questions remain whether insect populations are uniformly affected by land conversion and if insect conservation can occur in agricultural margins and urban gardens. We compare butterfly populations in tropical secondary forests to those found in sugarcane and urban areas in coastal Guyana and evaluate the potential for particular butterfly communities to inhabit human-modified landscapes.