The increasing expansion of the urban environment has been considered one of the causes of biodiversity loss. Due to the decrease of the quantity and quality of habitats, this process causes the restriction of organisms to sometimes-specific microhabitats. The patterns of variation of the biodiversity along the environmental gradients, however, are still poorly understood. This study evaluated how urban gradients affect the diversity, specific composition and frequency of guild of the community of butterflies. Butterflies were collected in three transects continuously traversing the urban, rural and preserved habitats using baited traps and by active sampling. We found that the urban gradient acts as an environmental filter in the butterfly communities, reducing the richness and frequency of guilds of frugivorous butterflies, structuring the community through turnover, but without effects in the abundance. This study shows the importance of the urban gradients approach in the butterfly community and its applicability in the management of urban areas in order to include native vegetation along the gradients, aiming at increasing environmental heterogeneity, to preserve butterflies and maintain the ecosystem services and network interactions in altered landscapes.

中文翻译：

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城市梯度改变了热带蝴蝶群落的多样性，特定组成和行会分布

城市环境的不断扩大被认为是生物多样性丧失的原因之一。由于栖息地数量和质量的下降，该过程导致生物受到有时特定的微生境的限制。然而，关于生物多样性沿环境梯度变化的模式仍然知之甚少。这项研究评估了城市梯度如何影响蝴蝶群落行会的多样性，特定组成和行会频率。使用诱饵诱集装置并通过主动采样，在三个横断面中连续跨越城市，乡村和自然栖息地收集蝴蝶。我们发现城市梯度在蝴蝶群落中起到了环境过滤器的作用，从而减少了食肉蝴蝶的行会的丰富度和频率，通过营业额来构建社区，但不会影响其数量。这项研究显示了城市梯度方法在蝴蝶群落中的重要性及其在城市管理中的适用性，以便包括沿梯度的原生植被，旨在增加环境异质性，以保护蝴蝶并维持生态系统服务和网络相互作用在改变的风景中。