| Título: | A preliminary synthesis of the knowledge on the Mexican Papilionoidea (Lepidoptera : Insecta) |
| Autores: |
Martínez, AL Fernandez, IV Gutierrez, AL Llorente Bousquets, Jorge Enrique |
| Fecha: |
20110122T10:26:42Z 20110122T10:26:42Z 2000 |
| Publicador: | Facultad de Ciencias - UNAM |
| Fuente: |
 |
| Tipo: | Article |
| Tema: |
Biodiversity Conservation Entomology distribution richness endemism collections databases Papilionoidea Papillonidae Pieridae Nymphalidae Lycaenidae Mexico |
| Descripción: |
(3) the richness pattern is independent of the endemism pattern because the richest areas are the tropical humid lowlands and (5) Mexico presents several insular intracontinental patterns, which are the product of the disjunct and heterogeneus distribution of xeric and humid parts, which are the result of the complex biogeographical history of the country. Butterflies, together with vertebrates and higher plants, are often used for conservation studies and monitoring worldwide. This is due to the advanced development of their systematics, ecology and biogeography. In Mexico, studies on butterflies go back to the last century (Bialogia CentraliAmericana) and since then knowledge has advanced significantly. More than 1,800 species of butterflies in five families, 20 subfamilies, 50 tribes and almost 500 genera have been already recognized. This information has appeared in more than one hundred monographs and books and in many papers published in at least 12 major periodical journals. The main synthetic results of the above work are: (1) Mexico holds 10% of the Rhopalocera of the world and ranks among the ten richest countries in terms of butterflies (2) our country and neighboring areas hold paleo and neoendemic groups of the greatest interest, some of them relictual, mainly in the xeric parts of the north and west and in the mountain ranges of the south (4) the areas with higher endemism and richness are those with the greatest physiographic, climatic and vegetational heterogeneity (e. g. Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz and Sierra de Juárez, Oaxaca, each one with about 35% of the species richness), the conservation of butterfly diversity depends on habitat conservation because slight changes may induce local extinctions, but we still lack indepth and long term studies about these problems |
| Idioma: | Español |