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Dryad

Geography of life histories in a tropical fauna: The case of Indian butterflies

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Abstract

To explore factors structuring a tropical butterfly fauna, separate effects of geography, climate, land covers, and socio-economic conditions, and to relate patterns due to the above groups of predictors to life history traits of the constituent species. Location: Republic of India, Indo-Malayan Realm. Taxon: A total of 1386 butterfly species. Checklist butterfly data for 36 Indian federal states and union territories were subject to ordination analyses, relating the species composition of the states' and territories' faunas to physical geography, climate, land covers, and socioeconomic conditions of the states. The patterns obtained were interpreted in terms of life history traits of the butterflies using the fourth-corner method, both ignoring and considering the phylogenetic signal in the environment × life history relationships. Physical geography was the strongest predictor of the states' butterfly faunas’ compositions. It was followed by climate, land covers, and socioeconomics. The main faunal structures separated the humid Northeast from the rest of the country, distinguished humid Western Ghats states from the rest, and grouped together peninsular mountains. Faunas of the humid northeastern and southwestern states contain larger butterflies developing on woody plants or large grasses; those of arid and high-altitude states contain small species developing on small forbs; whereas broad host plant scopes tend to be associated with shrubs and vines and large geographic ranges. Associations of body size to host plant forms were strongly phylogenetically dependent, whereas associations to range sizes were not. Analysing factors affecting regional species compositions of tropical faunas at a relatively crude level of such political units as Indian federal states and interpreting the resulting patterns by life history traits revealed intriguing relationships despite still incomplete knowledge of life histories of many of the Indian species. Much work on deciphering ecological requirements of individual species is still needed.