Relationship between Plant Habitat Types and Butterfly Diversity in Urban Mountain Parks

Abstract

Butterflies serve as valuable indicators of urban ecosystem quality. Due to their accessibility, they also provide urban residents with essential opportunities to connect with nature, fulfilling social functions such as education and recreation, which significantly contribute to city dwellers’ physical and mental well-being. Urban mountain parks are critical habitats for butterflies; analyzing their spatial and temporal distribution and the impact of plant elements is crucial for enhancing plant landscape quality and butterfly diversity. The main results were as follows: (1) A monthly butterfly survey was carried out over the course of a year in the seven urban mountain parks of Fuzhou City. This survey recorded 46 species of butterflies from 36 genera across 7 families, totaling 2506 butterflies. (2) Among the seven habitat types analyzed, TS-, T-, and SG-habitats exhibited elevated levels of butterfly diversity, richness, abundance, and evenness. There were variations in butterfly evenness, diversity, richness, and abundance observed between these habitats. With the exception of N-habitat, there was a consistent seasonal pattern in butterfly diversity across different habitat types. (3) Butterfly diversity and abundance were significantly correlated with vegetation habitat factors across the tree, shrub, and herb layers. Multiple regression modeling using the Akaike information criterion revealed that arbor layer vegetation factors were present in the top four models for butterfly diversity, richness, abundance, and evenness. (4) The quality assessment of different habitat types ranked habitats as follows: TS-habitat > SG-habitat > TSG-habitat > T-habitat > TG-habitat > G-habitat = N-habitat.