Butterflies and Flowers of Santiago, Nuevo León, Mexico
Description
We hypothesized that both butterfly and flower abundance and species richness would be higher following an uncontrolled forest fire near the hamlet of Cienega de Gonzalez, Nuevo Leon, Mexico compared with the butterfly assemblage in an unburned forest near the hamlet of Las Guacamayas, NL. We also hypothesized that butterfly generalists would be more abundant in the burned site than in the control site. We used two different methods to survey butterfly assemblages: Pollard walk-and-count transects and Van Sømeren Rydon trapping. Flowers were recorded while conducting transect surveys. These data clearly show that the butterfly and flower communities were both more abundant and species rich in the burned site. Generalists were more common in the burned sites than control sites, specialists were equally abundant in control and burned sites. Descriptions accompany each file and R script of data analyses.