Butterfly Diversity in Various Land Cover Types of PTPN V Tamora Oil Palm Plantation, Kampar, Riau

Abstrak. Santosa Y, Yohanna, Wahyuni I. 2017. Butterfly Diversity in Various Land Cover Types of PTPN V Tamora Oil Palm Plantation, Kampar, Riau. Pros Sem Nas Masy Biodiv Indon 7: 110-116. Indonesia’s palm oil production has increased to 32 million tons and a total of 27 million ton in exports, which is in line with the increasing number of plantations. Changes of forests into oil palm plantations have caused alterations on the ecosystems due to the monoculture nature of the plantings system. This has raised some concerns among the world’s community for the conservation of biodiversity, including butterflies. Ecologically, butterflies contributed in maintaining ecosystem balance and played important role in helping the pollinations of flowering plants. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a research on the diversity of butterfly in various land cover types. The study was conducted in PTPN V Tamora, of Riau Province in 6 types of land covers (old-growth oil palm plantation aged 25 years, young-growth oil plam plantation aged 2 years, HCV (High Conservation Value) area within the oil palm plantation, smallholding oil palm plantation (KSR), and secondary forests closest to the plantation. HCV area represented the primary forest and secondary forest represented the land cover prior to the establishment of the plantation. The study was conducted in March-April 2016. Data were collected using time search method for 3 hours (08: 00 to 11: 00 WIB) and were analyzed using Margalef Index, Evenness Index, and Sorensen Similarity Index. Based on the observations, the total number of butterfly species found in the 6 land cover types were 39 species of 182 individuals, belonging to four families: Papilionidae (4 species), Nymphalidae (26 species), Pieridae (5 species), and Lycanidae (4 species). Nymphalidae had the most number of species, and the most species type found was Leptosia nina. The most numbers of species and individuals were found in the old-growth oil palm plantation (S = 19), while the least numbers of species were found in the young-growth oil palm plantation (S = 8). The highest species richness was found in KSR2 (dmg = 4.61), while the lowest was in the young-growth oil palm plantation (dmg = 2.65). The highest number of similarity index was found among the two smallholding oil palm plantations. Based on the conservation status, all butterflies found were not under the protection status. This suggested that changes in land cover to monoculture did not affect the diversity of butterfly.