How polyphagous are Costa Rican dry forest saturniid caterpillars? Pp. 369-379 in

"The caterpillars of the 31 species that breed in the dry forest of the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica feed on the foliage of 77% of the 66 woody dicotyledenous families, 51% of the 240 woody dicotyledenous genera and 47% of the 370 woody dicotyledenous species available to them in the ACG dry forest. Their degree of polyphagy ranges from that of Automeris zugana caterpillars feeding on 84 species in 66 genera in 26 families to that of 10 caterpillar species having only a single food plant species each (e.g. Copaxa moinieri on Ocotea veraguensis, Schausiella santarosensis on Hymenaea courbaril, Syssphinx mexicana on Acacia collinsi, Copiopteryx semiramis on Manilkara chicle, Caio championi on Bombacopsis quinata). The extreme polyphages, which are almost entirely Hemileucinae, display a two-stage strategy of oviposition on 5-10 species of food plants followed by penultimate and last instar caterpillar movement onto many additional species of food plants. The pattern of food-plant use in the ACG dry forest displayed by these ecologically and geographically widespread large caterpillars is hypothesized to be derived from ecological fitting of immigrant species as they arrive, rather than through contemporary and sustained coevolution among the caterpillars themselves and their food plants. A caterpillar-food plant interaction of this nature is probably characteristic of any diverse tropical forest canopy and many large taxa of caterpillars."