Introduction

The Cerrado (savanna-like vegetation) is one of the most threatened ecosystem due to urban expansion, agriculture, fire, afforestation, extraction of ornamental species, mining and road construction (BARBOSA et al., 2010; RIBEIRO & FREITAS, 2010; NEGREIROS et al., 2011; FERNANDES et al., 2014). The Espinhaço range comprises a group of mountains between the municipality of Ouro Branco (MG) and the southern part of the state of Bahia (Chapada de Diamantina), and extends for approximately 1200 km, with elevations greater than 800 m a.s.l.. Serra do Cipó is located in the southern part of the Espinhaço range, where there is a predominance of a complex ecosystem called the Rupestrian Grassland (FERNANDES, 2016; GIULIETTI, 1987). The plant species of this ecosystem have striking morpho-anatomical peculiarities that comprise a flora with high degree of morphological and behavioral convergence, diversity, and endemism (FERNANDES, 2016; ECHTERNAACHT et al., 2011; RAPINI et al., 2008; NEGREIROS et al., 2014).

Butterflies have been considered one of the best flagship species for conservation because most species are conspicuous and colorful (NEW, 1997). Other reasons that make butterflies Good environmental indicators are: short lifespan, diurnal habits, high diversity, easy sampling, identification and relatively well known taxonomy (BROWN & FREITAS, 1999; BHARDWAJ et al., 2012). Butterflies are involved in many ecological interactions, have close relationships with plants, and have been used as models in ecological and evolutionary studies. Butterflies are also used in many studies for habitat conservation because they are especially vulnerable to landscape and habitat fragmentation and loss, responding quickly to changes in vegetation and climate (BROWN & FREITAS, 1999; ROY & SPARKS, 2000).

A species checklist is of fundamental importance for conservation plans and environmental monitoring methods (MIELKE et al., 2008). The recognition of endemisms and local rarities are also important criteria to determine which areas have conservation potential (ROMERO & NAKAJIMA, 1999). Among the threatened Brazilian Lepidoptera, Rhetus belphegor (Westwood, 1851) (Riodinidae: Riodininae) is the only species recorded from Serra do Cipó (BROWN, 1993; MACHADO et al., 2008; NASCIMENTO & CAMPOS, 2011). However, this may be due to the lack of studies on Lepidoptera in the entire region. We expect that the number of endangered and endemic species will rise as more studies are carried out. Furthermore, we expect that these studies will lead to a better understanding of the butterfly fauna composition on the unique environment of the rupestrian grasslands. The aim of this study was to report the first list of butterfly species of the rupestrian grasslands in Serra do Cipó, a region that has been intensely studied for other groups of organisms (e.g., galling insects: LARA et al., 2002; ants: ARAÚJO & FERNANDES, 2003; freefeeding herbivores: RIBEIRO et al., 1998).

Materials and Methods

STUDY AREA

Serra do Cipó has a humid, subtropical climate with a dry winter and a temperate summer (Cwb in Köppen’s classification) (ALVARES et al., 2013), with mean temperatures between 17.4 and 19.8º C. The annual precipitation is about 1500 mm, with a wet season from November to January, a transitional period from February to April, and a dry season from May to September followed by another transitional post-dry period in October (MADEIRA & FERNANDES, 1999). The soil of Serra do Cipó is sandy, shallow, extremely oligotrophic and with high concentrations of aluminum and low capacity for water retention, (NEGREIROS et al., 2008; NEGREIROS et al., 2011). The study plots were located inside the National Park of Serra do Cipó and the Environmental Protection Area Morro da Pedreira, in the district of Serra do Cipó, Minas Gerais, Brazil (Fig. 1).

SAMPLING

Butterflies were recorded in seven plots between 800 and 1400 m a.s.l.. In each plot three transects separated by 500m were sampled, for a total of 21 transects for the whole collecting area. Butterflies were sampled using both nets and traps. For sampling butterflies using nets, each transect was 250 m in length. Sampling employed two well-trained researchers sampling for two consecutive hours. Sampling took place 3 times during the day: soon after sun rise (at 08:00 am- 10:00 am), in the heat of the day (11:00 am-1:00 pm) and just before sun set (2:00 pm-4:00 pm). For sampling butterflies using traps, four Van Someren-Rydon (VSR) traps were placed in each transect separated by a distance of 50 m. Traps were baited with a mixture of banana and sugar cane that had been fermented for 48 hs. Traps were set on the first day while the next three days were reserved for daily butterfly collection at all traps.

Sampled individuals were immediately sacrificed and placed in entomological envelopes. Each envelope included the date, time of sampling (in case of net study), sampling point, trap number (for trap sampling) and the name of the collector. In the laboratory, the butterflies were identified using available field guides (D’ABRERA, 1981, 1984, 1987, 1994, 1995; CANALS, 2003; UEHARA-PRADO et al., 2004; SILVA et al., 2010) and the specimen collections of the Campinas University (Unicamp), Zoological Museum of São Paulo University (MZUSP), and Coleção Entomológica Pe. Jesus Santiago Moure at Paraná University (UFPR). Classification followed LAMAS (2004) and subsequent revisions (MIELKE, 2005; WAHLBERG et al., 2009; DUARTE & ROBBINS, 2010; WARREN et al., 2013). Sampling occurred in January, April, July and October 2012, and January, May, August and October 2013, encompassing the times of the year with the greatest differences in weather conditions (MADEIRA & FERNANDES, 1999).

ACCUMULATION CURVES

We constructed two accumulation curves, one for each method (entomological net and trap), in order to evaluate the sampling efficiency of both methods. Species curves were constructed using the Vegan package (2.2-1 version) (OKSANEN et al., 2015) in the R program environment (R CORE TEAM, 2015).

Results

Total butterfly sampling effort was 336 net hours and 252 trap days. The traps sampled only four subfamilies (Biblidinae, Charaxinae, Satyrinae and the satyroid lineage of the subfamily Nymphalinae) of the family Nymphalidae (DEVRIES et al., 2001; FREITAS & BROWN, 2004). We recorded 1,520 individual butterflies of 172 species belonging to 17 subfamilies (Table I). Six butterfly families were recorded and the number of species per family was: 59 species of Hesperiidae, 28 of Lycaenidae, 54 of Nymphalidae, 5 of Papilionidae, 12 of Pieridae, and 14 of Riodinidae. The most common species were Paryphthimoides sp2 (Nymphalidae) (N=135), Eurema elathea flavescens (Chavannes, 1850) (Pieridae: Coliadinae) (N=125), Hemiargus hanno (Stoll, 1790) (Lycaenidae: Polyommatinae) (N=122), Yphthimoides manasses (C. Felder & R. Felder, 1867) (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) (N=92), and Pyrisitia nise tenella (Boisduval, 1836)(Pieridae: Coliadinae) (N=75). Together, these five species, represented 36% of the total sample. We recorded 71 (41%) species with only one capture (singletons). Only four species occurred in all seven studied areas: Hemiargus hanno, Junonia evarete (Cramer, 1779) (Nymphalidae: Nymphalinae), Eurema elathea flavescens (Chavannes, 1850) and Phoebis sennae marcellina (Cramer, 1777) (Pieridae: Coliadinae). One new species was found in this study: Paryphthimoides sp. 2 (Nymphalidae) (A. V. L. Freitas personal observation) was found between 800 and 1400 m a.s.l. The new species is deposited in Campinas University (Unicamp) museum. Some specimens cannot be identified at species level due to the damage suffered during the sampling or because of the wing scale loss that occurs naturally throughout the insect’s life. Others belong to a poorly studied butterfly group, the Satyrinae, which has many species with uncertain taxonomic position.

The accumulation curve for sampling by net butterfly richness per family did not indicate a tendency to asymptote. Although our sampling effort was similar to other studies in non-forest ecosystems (e.g. CARNEIRO et al., 2014; CARVALHO et al., 2015; MARCHIORI & ROMANOWSKI, 2006), the area studied showed a high richness of butterflies, indicating that we might be able to discover more butterfly species if more localities are sampled. The accumulation curve for sampling by trap exhibited a tendency towards asymptote (Fig. 2).

Discussion

The number of species found in this study is similar to that found by other surveys of grassland habitats in Brazil (ISERHARD et al., 2010; DOLIBAINA et al., 2011; CARNEIRO et al., 2014; CARVALHO et al., 2015), but is lower than that of other types of locations, such as the Atlantic rain forest (652 species: BROWN, 1992) and Cerrado (839 species: MIELKE et al., 2008). However, in addition to the need for further sampling, as indicated by the accumulation curve, our study was restricted to a single area that was smaller than the areas in the other studies.

Among the sampled species, 107 (62.2%) are considered typical of open environments or have been recorded in other grassland environments (MIELKE et al., 2008; ISERHARD et al., 2010; DOLIBAINA et al., 2011; CARVALHO et al., 2015; BROWN, 1992; CALLAGHAN, 1982; KAMINSKI et al., 2015; MARCHIORI & ROMANOWSKI, 2006; KAMINSKI et al., 2012; KAMINSKI & CARVALHO-FILHO, 2012; PAZ et al., 2013; FREITAS & MARINI-FILHO, 2011; GOZZI et al., 2012; SILVA et al., 2015). Only 25 (14.5%) of the species found in this study had been previously recorded in the only other study done in the Espinhaço mountain range (NERY et al., 2014) (Table 1).

The most abundant and species rich families were Hesperiidae (over one third of all collected species, 33.7%) and Nymphalidae (31.9%). These are the most species rich butterfly families in the Neotropics (LAMAS, 2004). They are also known to have a positive association with monocotyledons during their early life stage (DEVRIES, 1985; FERRER-PARIS et al., 2013), and since monocotyledons are dominant in the rupestrian grasslands of Serra do Cipó (RAPINI et al., 2008), they likely contribute to the wide distribution of these butterfly taxa. The most abundant butterfly species was a new species of Paryphthimoides, indicating the need for more inventories in the region of Serra do Cipó. The other abundant butterfly species in this study are known to be common in open, grassland, ruderal or even in disturbed areas (BROWN, 1992). The species that were found at all of the sampling points of this study have wide distributions and occur in many regions of Brazil (MOTTA, 2002).

In comparison to other surveys in Minas Gerais, the present study was fourth in the total number of butterfly species encountered, behind studies in Poços de Caldas (EBERT, 1969), São Francisco River (SOARES et al., 1999) and Uberlândia (MOTTA, 2002) (see Table II). Of all the species collected by us, 61 had not been previously recorded for Minas Gerais, with 32 (52.4%) species of Hesperiidae, 14 (22.9%) species of Lycaenidae, 22 (36%) species of Nymphalidae, 2 (3.2%) species of Pieridae, and 10 (16.4%) species of Riodinidae. Therefore, this study greatly expands knowledge of the butterfly fauna of Minas Gerais.

Butterflies of tropical mountains remain poorly known, which makes it difficult to recognize and determine the conservation and endemic status of these major taxa of herbivores. For example, the species Arcas ducalis (Westwood, 1852) (Lycaenidae: Theclinae), which was found in our study, was previously known to be restricted to mountaintop environments with preserved vegetation in southern and southeastern Brazil (NICOLAY, 1971; BROWN, 1992; BROWN, 1993).

This species is considered endangered in the states of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santos (BROWN & FREITAS, 1999; OTERO et al., 2000; AZEVEDO et al., 2007). Another example is R. belphegor, with three individuals collected in one plot at 1300 m a.s.l. in the present study. This species is on the Brazilian red list of threatened species (MMA, 2014) and is classified as Endangered (EN) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Another species reported here, M. julia and Strymon ohausi, both belonging to family Lycaenidae, are also classified as Endangered (EN) by the IUCN (FREITAS & MARINI-FILHO, 2011; MMA, 2014). Cunizza hirlanda planasia (Pieridae: Pierinae) is another species on the national red list of threatened species (MMA, 2014), and is listed as Vulnerable (VU) indicating that more information about its biology and distribution are required. This was the first record of M. julia, S. ohausi and C. hirlanda planasia in Serra do Cipó, all sampled outside the Serra do Cipó National Park (a full protection conservation unit); however, they were found in Morro da Pedreira Environmental Protection Area (a sustainable use conservation unit). Our record on the distribution of Hermeuptychia atalanta (Butler, 1867) (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae) represents a newrecord for southeastern Brazil (SERAPHIM et al., 2014).

Conclusión

Results have shown that rupestrian grasslands host a great diversity of butterflies, including species listed as endangered. Because it is a montane environment, particularly exposed to the consequences of global warming, conservationist efforts are needed in order to protect the integrity of this unique ecosystem.

Acknowledgments

We thank André Vitor Lucci Freitas, Diego Dolibaina and Fernando Dias for butterfly species identifications, Parque Nacional da Serra do Cipó, Pousada Serra Morena, Cedro Cachoeira Indústria Têxtil, Reserva Vellozia and Pousada Pedra do Elefante for logistic support. Instituto Chico Mendes license number 23234-3. We acknowledge the support provided by CNPq, and FAPEMIG. MD has been supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP grants 2002/13898-0, 2010/14682-8), and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq grants 563332/2010-7, 305905/2012-0). This is the contribution #074 of the PELD-CRSC-17.

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