Effect of Tree-Fall Gaps on Fruit-Feeding Nymphalid Butterfly Assemblages in a Peruvian Rain Forest

Effect of Tree-Fall Gaps on Fruit-Feeding Nymphalid Butterfly Assemblages in a Peruvian Rain Forest

Seed arrival in tropical forest tree fall gaps.

Tree deaths open gaps in closed-canopy forests, which allow light to reach the forest floor and promote seed germination and seedling establishment. Gap dependence of regeneration is an important axis of life history variation among forest plant species, and many studies have evaluated how plant species differ in seedling and sapling performance in gaps. However, relatively little is known abou...

Relative contribution of neutral and deterministic processes in shaping fruit‐feeding butterfly assemblages in Afrotropical forests

The unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography has gained the status of a quantitative null model for explaining patterns in ecological (meta)communities. The theory assumes that individuals of trophically similar species are functionally equivalent. We empirically evaluate the relative contribution of neutral and deterministic processes in shaping fruit-feeding butterfly assemblag...

Spatial Pattern and Characteristic of Tree-fall Gaps to Approach Ecological Forestry in Northern Iran

Gaps created by falling trees (tree-fall gaps) are a natural disturbance in forest ecosystems. Understanding scale, pattern and the effect of gaps on regeneration is important to current and future forest management. The aim of this study was to determine the size, shape and the spatial pattern of tree-fall gaps and of associated regeneration. This study was carried out in three parcels (No.15,...

Fruit-feeding Butterfly Communities of Forest ‘islands’ in Ghana: Survey Completeness and Correlates of Spatial Diversity

We conducted a year long survey of the fruit-feeding butterfly fauna of sacred forest groves and forest reserves of Ghana. About one-third of all fruit-feeding species recorded for Ghana were trapped, but our total sample had not yet reached the point of species saturation. Rarefied species richness was higher in the larger forest reserves than in the small sacred groves, as predicted by specie...