Wet lowland rainforest in the valley of the Río Bogotá, Esmeraldas, 400m

Dry forest near Macará, Loja, 500m

West Andean cloudforest in the Reserva Las Golondrinas, Carchi, 2000m

Páramo and Volcán Antisana, Napo, 4000m

East Andean cloudforest near Chinapintza, Zamora-Chinchipe, 1600m

Wet lowland rainforest along the Río Napo, Napo, 400m

Estimated number of butterfly species: 4000
Country area: 272,116 km²
Elevational range: sea level to 6567m
Major biogeographic provinces: Transandean, Andean, Amazonian
Regional highlights: southwestern dry forests ; southeastern cloudforests (Zamora-Chinchipe)

Project participants and Lepidoptera researchers in Ecuador
Collaborators with the Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project are marked with an *. If you would like to collaborate or be listed on this page please contact Keith Willmott (kwillmott@flmnh.ufl.edu).

Museo Ecuatoriano de Ciencias Naturales, Quito *
Carlos Carrera (Acting Director)
Lead institution for Tropical Andean Butterfly Diversity Project in Ecuador, responsible for managing the databasing of local collections and assisting with organisation of student courses.

Butterflies of Ecuador project *
Keith Willmott (kwillmott@flmnh.ufl.edu) and Jason Hall (hallrios@yahoo.com)
A project to inventory and classify Ecuador's true butterflies (Papilionoidea) and publish comprehensive guides to the country's fauna

Mariposas del Ecuador *
Francisco Piñas and collaborators
A series of guides to the Lepidoptera of Ecuador

Various projects on Lepidoptera *
Patricio Ponce and Varsovia Cevallos

Inventory of Butterflies of Sangay National Park, Morona-Santiago *
Jean-Claude Petit

Caterpillars and Parasitoids of the Eastern Andes in Ecuador
Lee Dyer, Grant Gentry, Harold Greeney, Thomas Walla
An inventory of caterpillars and parasitoids from Yanayacu Biological Station, (Napo)

Arctiidae of the Southern Choco: Expeditions for the discovery of new species of tiger moths in western Ecuador
Jeffrey Miller (jeffrey.miller@oregonstate.edu), Dana Ross (moreyross@comcast.net), Jane Lyons, Pablo Leon
The documentation and description of the tiger moth (Arctiidae) fauna across an elevational transect within the southern Choco Bioregion of northwestern Ecuador. This project is still tentative pending permits and funding (Pichincha)

Comparative study of Butterflies (Papilionoidea) between the Cordillera del Cóndor and the southeastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes at different altitudes *
Pablo Sebastián Padrón Martinez, sebastianpadronm@yahoo.com
A comparison of butterfly diversity and endemism between the Cordillera del Cóndor and adjacent Andes (Morona-Santiago). Aims include defining elevational ranges of species, identifying diversity at different elevations, determining which species or groups are present in each region, and making a collection of specimens from both regions. Sampling is being done at 800m, 1200m, 1600m and 2000m using traps and hand-nets.

Butterflies of Canandé
María Fernanda Checa, Hugo Mogollón
An inventory of butterflies from the Río Canandé Reserve, including research on correlations between the diversity and phenology of plants and butterflies attracted to bait traps (Esmeraldas)

Publications on butterflies of Ecuador

See Butterflies of Ecuador website

Other links relating to butterflies of Ecuador

Images of live Ecuadorian butterflies
Volunteer opportunities in Podocarpus National Park with Fundacion Arcoiris