Moth communities are more diverse in the understory than in the canopy of a tropical lowland rainforest in NW Ecuador

Tropical rainforests are the most species-rich terrestrial habitats and provide distinct niches for specialization and speciation, in part due to their vertical stratification. Stratification is observed in many insect orders as a result of abiotic factors, resource availability, competition and behavior. Here, we investigate the stratification of five clades of Lepidoptera: Erebidae-Arctiinae, Geometridae, Hedylidae, Saturniidae and Sphingidae, which differ in many aspects of their ecology and traits. The study was carried out in a tropical rain forest of the Chocó region in NW Ecuador. We used funnel traps equipped with weak UV-lamps to sample moths simultaneously in the canopy and understory in four forest habitats. We identified species using reference collections and DNA barcoding and present a qualitatively unique database for Neotropical rainforests, with 12,472 individuals of 676 species collected in 48 nightly catches. Average species richness was higher in the understory (73.5..., , # Moth communities are more diverse in the understory than in the canopy of a tropical lowland rainforest in NW Ecuador ## Publication The dataset for Böttger, Diniz, Keller, Leonhardt & Brehm (2026): 'Moth communities are more diverse in the understory than in the canopy of a tropical lowland rainforest in NW Ecuador' can be accessed at Dryad. Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.w3r22816r](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w3r22816r) The corresponding paper is available as open access in Ecology and Evolution: **[https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.73337](https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.73337)** ### Significance This study represents a qualitatively unique data set for Neotropical rainforests, because it covers all individuals of five Lepidoptera taxa. ### Sampling The data set contains moth recordings of field surveys conducted in tropical rainforests in the Río Canandé reserve (0.5263°N, 79.2130°W), from October to December 2021 and March to May 2022. The study region is in Esmeraldas, NW Ecuador ..., ,