Download or read book Conservation of Tallgrass Prairie Butterfly Species in a Highly Fragmented Landscape written by Scott Joseph Mahady and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consequences of habitat fragmentation on communities have been extensively studied. However, few studies on habitat fragmentation have addressed the role landscape context plays in determining local species assemblages. Our study examines how landscape composition at the regional scale effects prairie butterfly communities in 24 Midwest native tallgrass prairie remnants located in four distinct geographical regions. These regions differed in their degree of historical habitat heterogeneity and their current predominant land use (matrix habitat). The current land use categories, or matrix type, included: row crop agriculture, pasture for cattle grazing, woodland, and urban development. Historically, the regions varied from continuous tallgrass prairie ecosystem to the historically isolated and smaller 'goat prairies' located within the Driftless area in Northeast Iowa and Southwest Wisconsin. Area accounted for a significant amount of the variation in species richness only in the two historically fragmented regions.