Occurrence of butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea and Hesperioidea) in different habitats at the Araucaria Moist Forest and the Grasslands in the Basaltic Highlands in Southern Brazil

Abstract

Aiming to contribute to the knowledge of Araucaria Moist Forest butterflies in Rio Grande do Sul, a butterfly species list of the São Francisco National Forest and surroundings was compiled. Field expeditions were carried out bimonthly between March 2006 to May 2008 in six types of environments: (i) Araucaria angustifolia native forest, (ii) native forest mixed with Araucaria angustifolia plantation, (iii) Araucaria angustifolia plantation in open forest, (iv) Araucaria angustifolia plantation in closed forest, (v) Pinus plantation and (vi) grasslands in the basaltic highlands. After 674 net-hours of sampling effort 277 species and subspecies distributed in 9661 individuals, belonging to six families of butterflies were registered. One hundred thirty-nine species are new records for this region of Atlantic Forest and 13 species are new registers for Rio Grande do Sul State. Six species are rare and/or healthy environment indicators.