Types of butterflies in S. American rainforest

[Doug Yanega]

>Howdy,
>        My daughter came home from school with an assignment to find out
>how many
>different types of butterflies there are in the South American rainforests.
>Could someone please help us out? Any e-mail would be greatly appreciated.
>Thanks you all in advance. Bill.

Well, I hate to say this, but the person who gave that assignment is
probably going to have to settle for a very, very rough estimate. Not so
much because butterflies are a poorly-known group (anything but, relatively
speaking), but because the way the question is asked - specifying that the
butterflies have to be from South American rainforest - means that you have
to know the distributions of all the various species. There are great
references to get lists of all the Neotropical butterflies, like the
volumes by Bernard D'Abrera (that's a good place to look for the best
answer to your question), but those references don't specify which
butterflies are from the rainforest and which ones are not; they don't (so
far as I know, maybe someone else here can correct me if I'm wrong) give
lists of species by habitat type, or complete range maps, like you can get
for North American species, which is what you're asking for. There's a lot
more than rainforest in the South American tropics.
        Basically, getting an *accurate* answer to your question is the
kind of thing that would make a good semester-long project for a college
student, not a take-home assignment for grade school. I doubt that the
teacher had any genuine idea what they were asking for.

Peace,


Doug Yanega       Dept. of Entomology           Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521
phone: (909) 787-4315
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82