Similarity and difference among rainforest fruit-feeding butterfly communities in Central and South America

1. Documenting species abundance distributions in natural environments is critical to ecology and conservation biology. Tropical forest insect faunas vary in space and time, and these partitions can differ in their contribution to overall species diversity. 2. In the Neotropics, the Central American butterfly fauna is best known in terms of general natural history, but butterfly community diversity is best documented by studies on South American fruit-feeding butterflies. Here, we present the first long-term study of fruit-feeding nymphalid species diversity from Central America and provide a unique comparison between Central and South American butterfly communities. 3. This study used 60 months of sampling among multiple spatial and temporal partitions to assess species diversity in a Costa Rican rainforest butterfly community. Abundance distributions varied significantly at the species and higher taxonomic group levels, and canopy and understorey samples were found to be composed of distinct species assemblages. 4. Strong similarities in patterns of species diversity were found between this study and one from Ecuador; yet, there was an important difference in how species richness was distributed in vertical space. In contrast to the Ecuadorian site, Costa Rica had significantly higher canopy richness and lower understorey richness. 5. This study affirms that long-term sampling is vital to understanding tropical insect species abundance distributions and points to potential differences in vertical structure among Central and South American forest insect communities that need to be explored.