The butterflies of the Isle of Pines, Cuba: Eighty years on

This account extends the first substantial report of the butterflies of the Isle of Pines, which included 65 species collected for Carnegie Museum of Natural History during 1910, 1912, and 1913, from our fieldwork in 1975-197 6 and 1993-1995. One hundred eleven species have now been reported from the island, and distributional data are presented for all recent records. The List includes 64% of the Cuban fauna recorded from less than 2% of the tota l land area of Cuba; proportional representation of taxonomic families and endemic taxa in Cuba are considered. The island comprises two distinct part s: the cultivated, populous, and severely damaged northern two-thirds, incl uding hill ranges; the low, relatively undisturbed, dry forest of the south ern one-third, separated by a swamp, the Cienaga de Lanier. Species numbers for pooled localities north of the Cienaga are comparable with those of th e south, but diversity in the north is concentrated in very small species-r ich enclaves. These northern sites are faunal relicts; they are Vulnerable and they are unprotected, stressing the need for conservation of the southe rn forest zone. Wet and dry seasonality is considered, and the need for phe nological data for further assessing the fauna is discussed. Origins of the fauna are considered in the context of lack of phenotypic divergence betwe en Isle of Pines and main-island populations, and the late Pleistocene is p roposed as a major colonization period, with continuing two-way dispersive interchange across the Gulf of Batabano Viewed as probable. Genetic analysi s of three species shows close correspondence between Isle of Pines and mai n island populations. The fauna is compared with that of Cuba, in general, and of an ecologically equivalent region of western Cuba, in particular.