Abstract
The proportions of species in many of the 14 butterfly families and subfamilies found in the tropical forests of mainland Central and South America show relatively invariant or simple relationships with overall butterfly species richness at both local and regional scales. These relationships suggest that it may be possible to use the species total of a single butterfly group (an indicator) to predict the overall species richness of all other butterflies in an area. For practical purposes (ease of sampling, etc.), ithomiine butterflies (Nymphalidae: Ithomiinae) are a logical choice. There is a strong positive correlation between ithomiine species richness and the overall species richness of all other butterflies across all areas, and the proportion of this subfamily is reasonably invariant. It should therefore be possible to use the mean proportion (4·6%) to predict the overall butterfly species richness of an area for which the ithomiine total is known.
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