ON the FREQUENCY of BUTTERFLIES in EASTERN BRAZIL, with a LIST of the BUTTERFLY FAUNA of Pocas De CALDAS, MINAS GERAIS
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JOURNAL OF THE LEPIDOPTERISTS' SOCIETY Va I ume 23 Supplement 3 ON THE FREQUENCY OF BUTTERFLIES IN EASTERN BRAZIL, WITH A LIST OF THE BUTTERFLY FAUNA OF pocas de CALDAS, MINAS GERAIS Heinz Ebert Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciencias e Letras de Rio Claro S. Paulo, Brazill lWith the aid of the I'Fundac~o de Amparo ~ Pesquisa do Estado de S~o Paulo" and of the "Conselh6 Nacional de Pesquisas." Table of Contents Page I. Introduction--------------------------------------------- 1 II. Types of butterfly frequency----------------------------- 1 III. The regional (extensive) frequency----------------------- 2 IV. The individual (intensive) frequency--------------------- 4 V. The daily frequency of species--------------------------- 6 ~. The seasonal variation of the daily frequency of species- 8 VII. The daily frequency of the total number of individuals--- 14 VIII. The seasonal variation of the total number of individuals 15 IX. Conclusions---------------------------------------------- 20 X. Additional observations (a) Influence of the number of observers------------------ 21 (b) Influence of amount of collecting hours--------------- 22 (c) Observations on annual frequency of species numbers--- 27 (d) Observations in the high Tropics---------------------- 28 Literature cited------------------------------------------------ 30 Appendix I. Extensive frequency of the different families of butterflies in three selected areas of Eastern Brazil---------------------------------------------- 31 Appendix II. List of the 572 species of butterflies found at Po~os de Caldas ~inas Gerais) during 37 collecting days----------------------------------------------- 35 Frequency of Butterflies in Eastern Brazil 1 1. INTRODUCTION Since C. L. Remington (1955) first recorded his highest catch of butterfly species in one day, from the eastern part of the U.S.A., various contributions have been published on the same subject in The Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society: Hemming (1955) and Langer (1955) from the French Alps, Wiltshire (1956) from Persia, Shull (1958, 1962) from northern India. As is to be expected, the highest number from any Holarctic locality (50 to 60) is lower than the value obtained in the Palaeotropics (101), although comparison is difficult because the last value was the result of a party of seven COllectors, whereas all others refer to one observer only. Nothing from the Neotropics has been published on this subject. The present writer paid special attention to problems of butter fly frequency from the fall of 1950 through 1966. After every field trip any species met with and identified was noted in a card file, with its individual frequency, using five ranks from very rare to abundant. Also, since July, 1958, the number of species, grouped into subfamilies, was noted in a special table. The present data (through December, 1966) result from 212 full-day excursions, nine from the Amazonian region and 203 from eastern Brazil. Only the latter are taken into consideration here. A "full-day trip" is de fined as an excursion with at least four hours of collecting time, five to six hours of physical effort being, in our experience, the upper limit for a European in the Tropics. Half-day trips and those made under bad weather have been excluded. The distribution of full day trips in the sense given above, by years, is as follows (number of days given in parentheses): before 1959 (21),1959 (19[+9]), 1960 (16),1961(27),1962(11),1963(44),1964(22), 1965(11), 1966(32), Total (203[+9]). The card-file, however, contains all observations, including short or unsuccessful trips. Since April~96l, the in dividual frequency of any species noted has been also added tc the statistics of species, making available presently the results of 138 full-day trips for this data. Initially inspired by the above-cited papers, which deal only with the highest values observed, the author has here attempted to give a more complete treatment of the matter. Certainly, a greater number of observations would lead to more reliable conclusions; how ever,other duties may oblige the author to cease this very time consuming statistical work. Thus this contribution is now presented, although it is certainly susceptible to improvement. II. TYPES OF BUTTERFLY FREQUENCY The total number of species and individuals found in a given day is, naturally, a complicated function of several independent frequency variables: 1. The individual frequency, i.e., the number of individuals 2 Ebert: Types of frequency which characterizes a given population. This could also be called intensive frequency. 2. The seasonal variation of the individual frequency, which could also be called seasonal frequency. 3. The frequency of p¥tulations of a given species within a certain faunistical unit. ~is could be called also regional or ex w tensive frequency. In this contribution, the intensive and extensive frequency of species, as used during this study, will be discussed first. Then the number of species and individuals found during full-day excursions ("Daily frequency of species II and ''Total frequency of individuals") will be discussed, with the seasonal variation of the last two cate gories. A number of more than 100 species found in one day is not rare in Brazil. The highest value obtained hitherto was 153, but as will be shown below, a value of 200 is well within real possibility2, at least for a group of three or more collectors. III. THE REGIONAL (EXTENSIVE) FREQUENCY Reliable information on the frequency of butterfly species within a given region is extremely difficult to obtain, especially when the number of species present in it is 600 or more, as is the normal case in the Neotropics. Some approximation is possible if the collector frequents a great number of localities and if the excursions are equally distributed through the year. Then the number of observations of any species recorded during a given period must be a relatively simple function of the three frequency types mentioned above, and the only one in which the extensive frequency plays an important part. For practical use, a period has been chosen during which the most fre quent species (e.g. Pyrgus oiZeus oraus, Euptyahia hermes, HeZiconius erato phyZZis, etc.) were noted more than one hundred times. This period normally covered five years. As all notes on the card file were used, the observations made on days not counted as collecting days (half days and those in bad weather) are also included. The number of observations for the various species have been grouped into five classes: Very isolated (ii) 1 or 2 times seen during period chosen Isolated (i) 3 to 9 times II II II II Moderately distributed (id) 10 to 20 times II II II II Well distributed (d) 21 to 50 times II II II Very well distributed (dd) more than 50 times seen during period chosen 2 After this was written, higher values (cf. footnote 4) were obtained by other col lectors with more intensive methods (ten hours in the tield--a physical exertion possible only to very wei I trained persons, in a tropical cl imate). Frequency of Butterflies in Eastern Brazil 3 Three regions were studied in this way: the eastern part of the.State of Pernambuco, where the author collected from April 1957 untIl January 1962; the eastern part of the State of Sao Paulo CApril 1962-December 1966); and the surroundings of Rio de Janeiro (State of Guanabara) with the neighboring areas of Niter6i and the Organ Mountains eState of Rio de Janeiro; 1951-1956 and 1962-1966). The total numbers of species identified during this time are: 532 (Pernambuco), 742 (Rio) and 759 (S. Paulo). If the western parts of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Serra do Itatiaia) were to be included, the number for "Rio" would be 853. The number of species actually caught may be 10 to 20% higher, as a great number of species, mostly Hesperiinae and Thec1inae, but also many Euptychia and some Rio dinidae, are awaiting determination, still not being noted in the card file. The statistics gave the following result: Table 1: five ranks of its relative er- centage. Ea ste rn Rio de Janeiro Eastern Median Rank Pernamb uco etc. S. Pau 10 Percentage i i 149 (28) 247 (33) 241 (32) 32 198 (38) 22 8 (31 ) 286 (38) 36 id 78 ( 15) 110 ( 15) 131 ( 17) 15 d 72 (} 3) 117 ( 16) 83 (II) 13 dd 35 ( 6) 40 ( 5) ( 2) 18 --4 Total 532 742 759 100 The median percentages in the last column have been calculated with consideration of the relative weight of each region, e.g., for the rank dd: (6 x 532 + 5 x 742 + 2 x 759) : 2033. A more detailed form of Table 1 is given in Appendix I, containing the values separ ated for all families (and subfamilies) for the Hesperiidae. It may be noted that two-thirds of all species found have been seen less than 10 times, i.e., in less than 10% of the excursions made, and that only 4% of the total species have been seen in 50% of the trips. There can be no question that the greater part of the neotrop ical species has a very scattered distribution, being encountered only occasionally. Populations must be generally of very restricted size and widely separated from one another. Such behavior would be easily understood in a land with great variability of biotopes. It is, however, difficult to understand in tropical Brazil with its very monotonous vegetation (rarely more than half a dozen natural ("climax") associations in areas of hundreds of square kilometers). 4 Ebert: Intensive frequency IV. THE INDIVIDUAL (INTENSIVE) FREQUENCY The following five-rank scale has been used by the writer, all ranks referring to the number of individuals observed (for the greater part not caught) of any species, during at least four hours of field work-:- very rare Crr) 1 or 2 spec~mens rare (r) 3 to 9 speClmens infrequent Crf) 10 to 20 specimens common Cf) 21 to 50 specimens abundant (ff) more than 50 specimens At the beginning of the statistical work, these ranks were checked by real counting of a limited number of species.