Urban Climate Variability and its Impact on Butterfly Species Richness and Community Structure in Indore, India

Due to growing climate variability, environments are becoming more susceptible to the impact of climactic change, especially locally upon the biodiversity and especially the more ecologically sensitive species, including the butterfly. The current work examines the climate change and butterfly diversity with regard to three types of habitats (urban habitat, wetland landscape, and the periphery landscape) in the city of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India, between 2021 and 2023. The 71 butterfly species collected during the study fell under five families using standardized ecological survey techniques such as Pollard Walks and Transect Walks as well as the use of photographs. Diversity measures of butterflies were presented as species richness, abundance, Shannon-Wiener Index, Simpson Index, and evenness (Pielou), which were sampled and calculated on an annual basis and analyzed in respect to climate parameters: average temperature, total annual rainfall, and relative humidity. Climate information pointed to a slow rise in the mean annual temperature (25.1°C in 2021 to 25.5°C in the year 2023) and precipitation and minor variations of humidity. The abundance and diversities of butterflies were highest in 2022, which was also a year of highly moderate temperatures and precipitation, and declined in 2023, especially at an urban level. Correlation analysis indicated a high positive relationship between temperature and richness (r = 0.93) and abundance (r = 0.92), but the association of rainfall and humidity is complex, where there is a negative relationship with excess rain and richness. Certain habitats were more resilient, such as peripheral and wetland ones, and some were steeper, such as urban ones, because of habitat fragmentation and urban heat island activity. Trends at the species level indicated that generalists such as Eurema hecabe were stable, whereas specialists were decreasing. Although the study relies on a relatively short dataset of three years, its results confirm how flexible butterfly communities can be to pursue the minor changes of the climate condition and emphasize the ecological significance of semi-natural environments within the urban matrices.