This blog post is provided by Shuang Xing and tells the #StoryBehindThePaper for the article “Butterflies respond to habitat disturbance in tropical forests through activity shifts“, which was recently published in the Journal of Animal Ecology. In their study, Xing and colleagues investigate butterfly behavioural responses to habitat disturbance across tropical Asia, highlighting both their resilience and sensitivity to microclimatic change.

Intact tropical forests exhibit complex and diverse vegetation structures and microclimates. This highly heterogeneous environment offers thermal refuges that buffer temperature fluctuations, benefiting various forest-dwelling animals, which is particularly important for ectothermic groups such as butterflies. However, habitat disturbances—such as logging or extreme climate events—can reduce canopy cover and vegetation complexity, simplifying both the biotic and abiotic components of the forest and weakening such thermal buffering capacity. Among these disturbances, increased canopy openness due to human activities results in hotter and brighter forest environments, alters the diurnal patterns of understory temperature and light, and shortens the time lag between daily temperature and light peaks.

The activity patterns of ectotherms (including activity peak, duration, and intensity) are dependent on environmental temperature and light conditions, and microclimatic changes caused by habitat disturbance may shift these activity patterns. However, compared to the impacts of temperature change, the effects of altered light conditions on ectothermic activity have received less attention. While insects like butterflies are sensitive to changes in both temperature and light, they can also adjust behaviorally—for instance, by selecting favorable microclimates, sun basking, or shifting their activity times—to cope with environmental changes. Studying how butterflies behaviorally respond to microclimatic changes caused by habitat disturbance can help us understand how such disturbances could influence species’ ecological adaptation and ecological function.

Our results show that open forests have significantly higher temperatures and light intensity compared to closed forests, with temperature peaks lagging behind light peaks—a lag that is more pronounced in closed forests. Although butterfly populations in open forests began activity earlier and reached their peak sooner than those in closed forests, their activity duration and intensity remained similar. Despite differences in activity timing between forest types, butterflies experienced comparable temperature conditions in both, but were exposed to higher light intensity in open forests. This suggests that tropical forest butterflies adjust their activity timing to avoid higher temperatures but cannot avoid increased light exposure.

Our study demonstrates that butterflies can respond to microclimate changes with habitat disturbance in tropical forests by adjusting their activity patterns. This behavioral response helps buffer the impacts of temperature changes, but offers limited buffering against changes in light intensity in tropical forest. Our findings highlight both the sensitivity and resilience of certain tropical butterfly species to forest disturbance through shifts in activity patterns, and underscore the importance of monitoring and understanding changes in animal activity under increasing anthropogenic pressures.

Read the paper

Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.70053