Rapid assessments of tropical dung beetle and butterfly assemblages: contrasting trends along a forest disturbance gradient

Abstract. 1. We carried out rapid assessments of the richness and diversity of fruit‐feeding butterflies (sampled with baited traps) and dung beetles (sampled with buffalo dung‐baited pitfall traps) at 20 sites across an anthropogenic forest disturbance gradient in Ba Be National Park, Vietnam. 2. We investigated measures of diversity, richness, and functional composition for individual taxa in relation to the degree of disturbance, and verified whether dung beetles and butterflies showed congruent trends. 3. For butterflies, overall species richness increased with forest disturbance, but the richness of rare species decreased. Species diversity was uncorrelated with disturbance. 4. In dung beetles, species richness was unrelated to forest disturbance, but species diversity increased with forest disturbance. The richness of dung beetles in the telecoprid (roller) guild declined with forest disturbance. 5. There was no significant correlation between dung beetles and butterflies across sites for either species richness or species diversity. 6. Apparent effects of disturbance were thus sensitive to the particular metric used (species richness or diversity), the taxonomic group studied (butterflies or dung beetles), and the functional group investigated (different guilds of dung beetle).