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A butterfly hotspot in western China, its environmental threats and conservation

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Abstract

A butterfly species inventory of the Bifeng Valley within the Baishuijiang Natural Reserve in Gansu Province in China was conducted and several aspects of biodiversity were analyzed in a biogeographical context. One hundred and eighty-four species have been encountered belonging to 12 families and 99 genera. According to the total area of the Bifeng Valley of 30 km², an estimated density of six butterfly species per km² can be regarded as particularly high. A transect study in Bifeng Valley, aimed to quantify anthropogenic impact and the influence of remaining natural habitat on the occurrence of butterfly species and individuals. With higher levels of human disturbance and corresponding decreasing amount of natural habitat species numbers and overall butterfly abundance decreased. First suggestions on the inclusion of the rarest species in the area into certain conservation categories are provided. This is intended as a starting point to highlight conservation necessities and deficiencies in areas which are easily ignored as these are only rarely highlighted in an national and even more so in an international context.

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Acknowledgments

In process of this research we received vigorous support from Mr. Hongjian Wang who works for the Management Bureau of the Baishuijiang Natural Reserve, Gansu Province. Professor Mingtang Liu in Northwest A & F University identified butterfly specimens. This study was financed by scientific enterprise project of Gansu province Qs022-C31-069. Discussion of results also was possible through the German-Chinese year of Science, funded by BMBF (German Ministry for Science and Education) through the project LepiPub. XL, JS and OS also received funding via the EU FP 6 Integrated Project “ALARM” (Assessing LArge scale environmental Risks for biodiversity with tested Methods: GOCE-CT-2003-506675; www.alarmproject.net; Settele et al. 2005a), the EU FP 6 funded BiodivERsA project CLIMIT (Climate change impacts on insects and their mitigation; www.climit-project.net; Settele and Kühn 2009; Thomas et al. 2009) and the EU FP 7 Integrated Project SCALES (grant 226 852; Henle et al. 2010) and the EU FP 7 Collaborative Project STEP (grant 244090–STEP–CP–FP).

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Correspondence to Ya-lin Zhang.

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Table 5 Butterfly inventory of Bifeng Valley, species biogeography and their relative abundance

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Li, Xs., Zhang, Yl., Fang, Jh. et al. A butterfly hotspot in western China, its environmental threats and conservation. J Insect Conserv 15, 617–632 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-010-9361-8

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