Study sites
Fieldwork was conducted at two forest sites in Costa Rica that show
contrasting seasonality and precipitation: the Atlantic rainforest of La
Selva Biological Station (10°25′19” N, 84°00′54” W) and the Pacific
dry forest at Sector Santa Rosa of Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG)
(10°48’53” N, 85˚36’54” W) in Costa Rica (Figure 1). La Selva
Biological Station covers 1,611 ha of lowland wet tropical forest
between 35 to 137 m on the Caribbean slope of the Cordillera Central
mountain range. It has a mean annual temperature of 25˚ C with a mean
annual precipitation of 3,962 mm (Sigel, Sherry, & Young, 2006).
Sector Santa Rosa (of ACG) covers >38,000 ha of tropical
dry forest ranging from 0 m to 300 m, and is part of Área de
Conservación Guanacaste (Asensio, Schaffner, & Aureli, 2015). Sector
Santa Rosa (of ACG) has a mean annual temperature of 25˚ C with a mean
annual precipitation of 1,575 mm. Seasonality is more pronounced in the
former site (range 2,809-6,164 mm) than the latter (range 880-3,030 mm,
six-month dry season) (Gillespie, Grijalva, & Farris, 2009).