Nestedness of habitat specialists within habitat generalists in a butterfly assemblage.

ABSTRACT: The habitat requirements of a species are the resources, conditions and space required for survival and reproduction. The habitat requirements of butterflies have been well studied, but the extent to which individuals within a species and between species utilise and share the habitat is poorly known.In a butterfly assemblage in northern Italy, we found that adults from 30 species avoid deciduous high-density forests and their ecotones, and they were positively related to open areas and their ecotones. Besides these common features, five groups of species can be discriminated in relation to a gradient from open area to forest, and species within groups were not equally specialised, as observed from a bipartite network analysis. In particular, some species appeared to be specialised and othe

SUBMITTER: Trivellini G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7165506 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature