Butterfly Diversity in Tropical Forests and the Impact of Habitat Fragmentation

Abstract

Major factors of habitat fragmentation, including deforestation, agricultural expansion, and urbanization, provide a significant threat to the biodiversity of tropical ecosystems. Butterflies are particularly vulnerable to the destruction and fragmentation of forest ecosystems due to their role as sensitive bioindicators of climate change. Field surveys, species richness evaluations, and landscape ecology frameworks were utilized in this study to investigate how habitat fragmentation affects butterfly diversity in tropical forests. Fragmentation drastically lowers community composition, species richness, and abundance. This is most harmful to butterflies that are specialists or rely on forests for their survival. Reduced functional diversity and biotic homogeneity may result from fragmented landscapes supporting more edge-adapted and generalist species. Important ecological processes such as dispersal, host plant availability, and microclimatic stability are disrupted, altering species interactions and reducing the likelihood of specialized species' survival.