Park rangers use butterflies to take planet's pulse in a biodiversity
hotspot

Date:
May 2, 2022
Source:
Florida Museum of Natural History
Summary:
For the last decade, biologists have documented a worrying decline
in insect abundance, which some fear may prelude an arthropod
apocalypse.

These studies, however, are primarily carried out in temperature
regions while the tropics, which harbor the vast majority of
insect species, largely remains a black box. In a new study,
biologists turn to the aid of park rangers in Ecuador's Yasuni'
National Park -- considered one of the most biodiverse ecosystems
on the planet -- to assess changes to insect abundance.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
For the last decade, biologists have documented a worrying decline
in insect abundance, which some fear may prelude an arthropod
apocalypse. These studies, however, are primarily carried out in
temperature regions while the tropics, which harbor the vast majority
of insect species, largely remains a black box.


==========================================================================
In 2017, a group of scientists raised alarm bells by showing that flying insects had declined in Germany by more than 70% in the three preceding decades. Studies before and since then have shown similar patterns
in insects on a global scale. But with 1 million known species --
and conservative estimates indicating there are millions more awaiting discovery -- there aren't nearly enough entomologists to document the
full scale of insect diversity, much less how their populations change
over time.

In a new study, entomologists turn to the aid of park rangers in
Ecuador's Yasuni' National Park, broadly considered to be one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. Researchers, students and park staff
have been actively engaged in monitoring butterfly abundance in Yasuni'
since 2016 in an ongoing project that flips the script on the way most
survey efforts are conducted in the tropics.

"This study has obvious benefits for science and conservation, but it was
also important that it include social benefits for the people we worked
with," said lead author Maria Checa, a researcher at the Pontifical
Catholic University of Ecuador and a former doctoral student at the
Florida Museum of Natural History.

"We still know so little about the impacts of environmental change in
tropical areas, because we simply don't have enough researchers with
the expertise to study these regions," she said. "We need to empower
local actors with this knowledge, because they are key stakeholders in conservation." Building alternatives to parachute biology Scientists who
focus on conservation often run into a roadblock early in their endeavors:
Most of the world's biodiversity is unevenly distributed in the tropics,
but the majority of researchers who study it primarily live in temperate regions. As a result, the flora and fauna of many industrialized countries
are relatively well-studied and benefit from extensive monitoring
programs, like the decades-long survey of insect declines in Germany.



==========================================================================
A similar United Kingdom program using butterflies as a proxy for the
health of insect communities was launched in 1976 and has since been
adopted in at least 19 other European countries. These ongoing surveys
offer a wealth of data for scientists, but the patterns they reveal
provide only a small snapshot of the changes occurring globally.

"In Great Britain, you're dealing with less than 60 butterfly species,
while in Yasuni' alone there's likely more than 1,500," said senior
author Keith Willmott, curator and director of the Florida Museum's
McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity.

Scientists from many industrialized countries have tried to make up for
this imbalance by conducting short-term projects in tropical ecosystems,
often paying local residents to help with surveys and collections. This practice, sometimes called parachute biology, can yield important
scientific insights.

But when the project concludes or the funding runs dry, researchers
return to their institutions, and residents return to their normal lives.

Willmott says these limited surveys will be insufficient to effectively
monitor long-term population trends and help stave off what is currently
the worst extinction event since the death of the dinosaurs.

"Trying to make sense of abundance patterns in a tropical community where there's less climate seasonality and a myriad of complex interactions
taking place is incredibly complicated and requires long-term datasets,"
he said.



========================================================================== Getting these programs started and keeping them going, however, isn't
always an option in remote regions where human populations are scarce. So
when park rangers expressed interest in helping survey butterflies in
Yasuni' in 2015, Willmott saw the potential for a broad-scale partnership.

"Ecuador is dotted with national parks that have pristine forests, and
part of the job responsibilities for many park rangers is to conduct biodiversity monitoring. It just seemed to us that this was a potential solution to the expense and logistics of managing these projects,"
he said.

Butterflies are an ideal early warning system Even with the help of park rangers, there is no realistic way to feasibly sample the diversity of
an entire rainforest. Instead, biologists rely on indicator species,
organisms that are broadly distributed and easy to find but are sensitive enough to environmental change that they can be used to infer how related groups are faring.

For insects, those indicator species are butterflies.

"There are a number of reasons they make good indicators," Willmott
said. "They can be found just about everywhere, they're incredibly diverse
and they reflect what's going on in other organisms." Butterflies occupy
a central role in mazelike ecosystem webs. Most rely exclusively on
plants for food, and plants -- in turn -- rely on butterflies for
pollination. Caterpillars and butterflies also make a good meal for
predators higher on the food chain. If you take butterflies out of
the equation, the webs that bind natural communities together begin
to unravel.

This makes them the perfect litmus test for gauging ecosystem health.

And butterflies have another advantage that helps them stand out from
the crowd. "From a practical point of view, there's no question that
they are by far the easiest insect group to identify," Willmott said. In
a place as diverse as Ecuador, this last component is imperative.

Park rangers collect and compile diversity data Working with Checa,
Willmott, co-author Sofia Nogales from Ecuador's National Institute of Biodiversity and their colleagues, the rangers quickly learned how to
collect butterflies with bait traps and identify the most common species.

Since 2017, they've been conducting regular surveys with comparable
accuracy rates to those of trained field biologists. But their
contribution to the study didn't end there.

"The rangers wanted to be more involved with the project, so we started
talking about writing up a manuscript together," Checa said. "We set up
a workshop in Quito in which we provided computers and taught them how
to run basic statistical analyses on the butterfly data." For Checa,
the project represents an important shift in the way biodiversity
monitoring is carried out in her home country of Ecuador, one that she
hopes will help protect sensitive ecosystems and give voice to those
who inhabit them.

"The people who live in rural areas near protected forests often lack
resources and opportunities for formal training. It's challenging
for many to even finish high school," she said. "We're talking about decentralizing knowledge from academic institutions to local people and
from cities to rural areas." The Yasuni' National Park rangers, three
of whom are co-authors on this study, are currently in the process of
analyzing the data they continue to collect, which they plan to publish
in an upcoming article. "We are proud to be the first park rangers in
Ecuador to carry out a successful long-term monitoring program -- this
project has enriched our knowledge of biodiversity and the importance
of insects in ecosystems, especially butterflies, helping us to better
carry out our work," said co-author Leslie Bustos.

Ongoing support from the national park's administration has also been and continues to be critical for the project's success. Checa and Willmott
hope to expand the butterfly monitoring to additional protected areas
within Ecuador in the near future.

The researchers published their findings in Insect Conservation and
Diversity.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Florida_Museum_of_Natural_History. Note: Content may be edited for style
and length.


========================================================================== Related Multimedia:
* Butterflies_and_a_map ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Maria F. Checa, Sofia Nogales, Patricio A. Salazar, Leslie Bustos,
Vernardo Ojeda, Alcy Bustos, Keith R. Willmott. Implementing a novel
approach to long‐term monitoring of butterfly communities
in the Neotropics. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 2022; DOI:
10.1111/ icad.12567 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/05/220502142625.htm

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