Quantitative and qualitative samples of amphibian and lizard faunas were taken from forest litter in Costa Rica and compared with similar samples collected in Borneo, the Philippines, and Panama. Animal abundance is about ten times greater in Costa Rican lowland wet forest than in Borneo. Radically different routes and rates of energy flow are postulated to account for the difference. In a series of upland (1010-1425 m) samples in the Philippines, the number of litter lizards and frogs increases with elevation. A single upland (1200 m) Costa Rican sample contains about three times as many animals per 100 m2 as two lowland sites. This increase with altitude correlates well with hypotheses that overall tropical forest productivity is greatest at intermediate elevations. Herpetofaunal densities are greater in wet areas compared to dry sites and flat terrain compared to slopes. These observations are linked to the greater variation and lesser total litter fall in dry sites and/or slopes. The number of species of amphibians and lizards regularly inhabiting the litter is similar in all wet lowland forests studied. Increasing elevation and decreasing rainfall correlate with faunas having fewer species. The former is seen as the result of the differential ability of lowland species to invade uplands, and the latter as a decrease in the kind and duration of frog-spawning sites. Reduced equitability with increasing elevation is principally due to the much greater proportional increase of the commonest species. In the evolution of American and Bornean-Philippine wet lowland faunas, frogs with direct development (Eleutherodactylus) have radiated in the former in the same fashion that skinks have in the latter.