ABSTRACT
Understanding the distribution patterns of organism diversity as well as the mechanisms that determine them is the main objective of ecological studies (Fernandes and Price 1991; Lawton 1999; Price 2002b). The structure of a community can be determined by several factors that act in different temporal and spatial scales (Ricklefs and Schluter 1993; Godfray and Lawton 2001), such as abiotic conditions and the availability and quality of resources (Strong et al. 1984; Bell et al. 1991; Ricklefs and Schluter 1993). Although the analysis of different scales is essential to understand diversity patterns, this approach is rarely used for tropical insect communities (Lewinsohn et al. 2005). The majority of studies with these organisms were performed for short periods of time or only in a local scale (Lewinsohn et al. 2005), especially in tropical regions where tropical dry forests (TDFs) are largely neglected in terms of scientic investigation (Sánchez-Azofeifa et al. 2005c; Quesada et al. 2009).
