1. The habitat requirements of a species are the resources, conditions and space required for survival and reproduction. The habitat requirements of butterflies have been well studied, but the extent to which individuals within a species and between species utilise and share the habitat is poorly known.
2. In a butterfly assemblage in northern Italy, we found that adults from 30 species avoid deciduous high‐density forests and their ecotones, and they were positively related to open areas and their ecotones. Besides these common features, five groups of species can be discriminated in relation to a gradient from open area to forest, and species within groups were not equally specialised, as observed from a bipartite network analysis. In particular, some species appeared to be specialised and others appeared to be generalist, suggesting a nested pattern of resource use, rather than a clustered pattern in which each species uses a different subset of habitat types.
3. The degree of variation in specialisation among species varied with the number of species falling in each group. Thus, an increased number of species, and thus possibly competition, is more likely to promote the co‐occurrence of generalist and specialised species (nested patterns) rather than an increased niche segregation among species.
4. Ascertaining how species overlap their habitat use at a local scale can be relevant for conservation purposes, because specialised populations are potentially more susceptible to network distortions.

中文翻译：

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在蝴蝶组合中，栖息地专家在栖息地通才中的嵌套。

1. 一个物种的栖息地要求是生存和繁殖所需的资源，条件和空间。蝴蝶对栖息地的要求已得到很好的研究，但人们对物种内以及物种之间的个体利用和共享栖息地的程度知之甚少。
2. 在意大利北部的一个蝴蝶群中，我们发现来自30个物种的成虫避开落叶高密度森林及其生态交错带，它们与开放区域及其生态交错带呈正相关。除了这些共同特征外，还可以根据从开放区域到森林的坡度来区分五种物种，并且从二分网络分析中可以看出，各组中的物种并不是同等专业的。特别是，某些物种似乎是专门的，而其他物种似乎是通才的，这表明资源利用的嵌套模式，而不是每个物种使用不同的栖息地类型子集的集群模式。
3. 物种间专业化程度的变化程度随每组物种数量的下降而变化。因此，增加物种的数量，从而可能促进竞争，更有可能促进通才物种和专业物种的共生（嵌套模式），而不是物种之间的生态位隔离增加。
4. 确定物种如何在当地范围内与栖息地重叠使用对于保护目的可能是有意义的，因为专门种群可能更容易受到网络扭曲的影响。