You can tell the species of a butterfly by the unique structure made. Texas is an exceptional region for diversity of butterfly species . Because Texas is close to Mexico, the weather fairly mild, especially in the southern areas, and has a lot of different types of plants, we are able to host about 423 different species of butterflies within our state borders. The tropical rain forests in Brazil have the greatest diversity of butterflies in the world, with about 2,000 different species of butterflies. There are many more that have not been identified or named yet.
Butterflies are important to the ecology of an area.
They are biological indicators. This means that they tell us how healthy or unhealthy any given habitat is. If you see a lot of butterflies, then use of pesticides probably is low and variation of plant growth high. If you see few butterflies, then there is probably a lot of pesticides, pollution and few plants. Butterflies are also an important part of the food chain and the larger food web of any given area.