Habitat Fragmentation effects on butterflies

Introduction

There are many activities of the human beings that have destroyed the natural landscapes like clear cutting of forests or the expansion of the landscapes. There are many organisms which are affected by these activities and the new environments are not familiar for them. This results in the distribution of the organisms at different rates. The word habitat fragmentation is the word which can be used in many ways. The habitat fragmentation is a condition in which the habitat areas become smaller in size like they used to be before. The habitat fragmentation includes the changes in the environment that results in the partition of the small territory units which are continuous with each other. The phenomenon can be natural with time or it can also occur in some catastrophic or extraordinary events. Moreover, from the era of Holocene, people have generated remarkable and fast changes in the landscape all over the world. Due to these changes the biodiversity has decreased all over the world and the yields of natural resources is also decreased. The humans have created the habitat fragmentation mainly from the conversion into agricultural land, pollution, introduction of alien species, and deforestation. The systematic suppression and wildfires caused by humans have also created the habitat fragmentation. Several geological processes and the oscillations in the climate have also resulted in the fragmentation of habitat. The butterflies are the organisms which can be used for the study quality of habitat and the study of landscape effects, like the isolation of the habitat and the changes in the size of the region. The reason is because many butterflies create metapopulations and the arrangement of the region in patches produces effects on the butterflies too (Dover & Settele, pp.3-27). Another reason for selecting them is that almost all of the species of butterflies are very particular in selecting their habitat like they select specific host plants for their habitat (Munguira et al., pp.26). However, there are not any dependable standards according to which the quality of habitat can be identified or selected (Mortelliti et al., pp.535-547). The most important requirements for the butterflies are the availability of large quantity of host plants and the nectar plants (Erhardt & Mevi-Schütz, pp.28). Moreover, microclimate also produces an impact on the different stages of the life cycle of climate the microclimate is dependent on the local climate and the vegetation structure (Wickmann, pp.211). When the quality of habitat is considered, then the studies of fragmentation are not considered because they do not identify the effects. This happens because many improper variables are selected or the design of study is not the gradient of the quality of habitat (Mortelliti et al., pp.535-547). In addition, the landscape in these types of studies is grouped into the matrix of landscape and the patches of habitat but they do not consider the composition (Dover and Settele, pp.3-27). It is argued by Dennis et al. (2003) the context of landscape is vital because the environment ...