Species richness and diversity of fruit-feeding butterflies in six different forest types in Kinabalu National Park, Sabah (Borneo) were compared. The six sampling sites were situated in a primary rainforest, another old-grown forest of unknown history, three successional forests after commercial logging activities (approx. 30, 15, and 5 years ago), and a farmland site next to a local village. Butterflies were caught alive in traps using rotten bananas as bait. Species diversity was measured by Fisher's α of the logarithmic series. Species total was estimated by the "MMMeans"-method (Colwell, 1997). The primary forest contained most species and the highest diversity, on the farmland site the lowest number of species was found. The secondary forest sites were intermediates between the former two habitats with regard to their diversity and species richness, with the 15 year old site showing a more diverse fauna than the 30 or 5 year old site. Although almost none of the differences in diversity can be considered statistically significant (presumably due to low sample sizes), the results show patterns of diversity that correspond well with data for other Lepidoptera taxa (Geometridae, Pyralidae) from the same sites. If pseudoreplicates had not been recognized by individual marking of the butterflies, confidence limits for α-values would have been underestimated, and α-values themselves overestimated in most cases. The degree of deviation from true values differs between the habitats. For two fruit-feeding nymphalid butterflies, we reported maximum life spans of 45 (Neorina lowii), respectively 41 days (Basserona dunya).
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