Abstract: To provide basic information for protection of insect diversity of Xilingol Prairie National Nature Reserve, the butterfly communities were investigated from 2016 to 2018 for five different habitats-wetlands, mountain grassland, grassland with sparse woods, meadow steppe and typical steppe. Totally 1 174 butterflies were collected, which belong to 24 species, 18 genera and 3 families. Among them, Nymphalidae was collleced the most (650) and belonged to 14 species, 10 genera, and Lycaenidae was collected the least (68) and, belonged to 4 species, 4 genera. The analysis of the diversity characteristics of butterfly communities show that Nymphalidae was the highest in Margalef index (2.007 1) and Shannon-Wiener index (1.654 7), while Pieridae was the highest in Pielou index (0.635 9) and Lycaenidae was the highest in Simpson index (0.618 1). The investigation also found that the composition and diversity of butterfly in different habitats were significantly different. The most abundant butterflies (487) were belonged to 19 species and 15 genera from the grassland with sparse woods, which were the highest in Shannon-Wiener index (1.962 8) and Margalef index (2.908 7) among five different habitats. Comparably, the Simpson index (0.430 6) in wetlands was the highest and the Pielou index (0.806 1) was the highest in meadow grassland. In addition, the Jaccard index between different habitats was ranged from 0.25 to 0.5, suggesting a moderate dissimilarity. The Jaccard index (0.600 0) between mountain grassland and typical steppe was the highest. Meanwhile, the analysis revealed an obviously temporal feature of butterfly diversity in the Nature Reserve. The Shannon-Wiener index (2.335 6) and Margalef index (2.656 8) were the highest in July while the lowest were found in May (1.519 2 and 1.456 0, respectively).