The three locations chosen as study sites were: Tim’s new house (Site 1), the cornfield on Jeannie’s trail (Site 2), and the Soccer field (Site 3). Each location encompasses forested area as well as forest edge for butterfly observation. Site 1 is a combination of forest and “garden.” At the time of study, a new house was being built on the property. The edge area has mostly short, mowed grass, and two lime trees, whereas the forest area encompasses large palm trees, grasses, and other trees and plants. However, the site was frequently disturbed by volunteers working on the house, and loud music for part of the day, as well as grass mowing every few days. The deforested area (edge) of site 2 is an arid cornfield with very little plant diversity (mainly corn). The forest section has a relatively many plant species; an array of flowering bushes and plants, trees, vines, nettles, weeds, etc. can be found. Of all three sites, the cornfield is probably the least disturbed area, since it does not seem to be cultivated anymore. Site 3 is a marshy soccer field with short grass separated by short palm tree trunks from the forest area. The forest consists of larger trees, grasses, etc. The edge is moderately disturbed due to occasional soccer games and kids playing in the area.

The study was performed during the rainy season between July 10 th and 20 th with an average daily temperature between 21 and 23 C and humidity between 77 and 89 RH (Fig.2)

The transects for each site were measured to be 28m long and 8 m wide (4 m into the forest and 4 m into the edge) and marked (Fig. 1). During the examination period of the sites, butterflies were observed between 5.50 am and 12.00 pm on the 12 th, 18 th, and 19 th of July. Two trials, of each 30 minutes were conducted at each site; a total of 6 trials were recorded. Observed species in edge area and forest were recorded and on occasion butterfly species were caught by means of a butterfly net for references. On the 18 th of July a Malaise trap was erected at site 2 and left for 24hours for butterfly entrapment. Very few butterflies were caught and Malaise tends to only trap small butterfly species; therefore Malaise trap experiment was discontinued. Butterflies were finally identified via butterfly reference books by D’Abrera (1984), DeVries (1987), and INBio species identification internet site (2004). Data collected was graphed and interpreted.

 

Figure 1.Site transect (28m length, 4m width into forest, and 4m width into edge)		Figure 2: Graph showing temperature and humidity between 11th and 20th of July, 2005 in San Jose area.