Why are there so few butterflies in the high Andes?

  • Shapiro A
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Abstract

The high Andes have a depauperate butterfly fauna even though they are adjacent to the faunistically rich Amazonian lowlands. Andean oreal butterfly faunas are impoverished even as compared to the mountains of California. There is a tradition of attributing the high-Andean fauna to Holarctic lineages which colonized South America in the Great American Interchange some 2-3 million years ago. Most of the critical taxonomic relationships are too poorly resolved to separate common ancestry from convergence, but in at least the Thecline Lycaenids cladistic studies strongly support convergence. Unusual aspects of the Andean and Patagonian butterfly faunas (including relationships between the tropical Andes and the temperate south, host-plant relationships, and the dominant position of the Pronophiline Satyrids) are reviewed and placed in both biogeographic and paleogeographic contexts.

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APA

Shapiro, A. M. (1994). Why are there so few butterflies in the high Andes? The Journal of Research on the Lepidoptera, 31(1–2), 35–56. https://doi.org/10.5962/p.266583

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