Insect and Arachnid Biodiversity in Southern South America

该奖项使一个基础广泛，多调查员调查， 南美洲南部昆虫和蜘蛛类生物多样性。 的 智利和阿根廷的节肢动物区系需要这种立即和 仔细观察，至少有三个原因。 首先，正如 新大陆热带地区的热带雨林，南温带 森林目前正以惊人的速度遭到破坏， 必须迅速和彻底地对动物群进行取样， 仍然是可能的。 第二，动物群包括许多分类群， 特殊的系统发育意义;最原始的成员 已知许多分类群是该地区特有的。 第三， 该动物群对地理学家具有特殊意义， 一般来说，南温带生物多样性的相互关系 是一个主要的兴趣和努力的焦点， 世纪。 调查将有助于准确识别 智利和阿根廷境内最小的特有区， 帮助把那些需要维护的森林分开， 尽可能地从那些最能被用作 可持续资源，同时又不危及 生物群 该奖项将资助一名研究生和两名 博士后研究员以及约118人-周的实地工作。

This award enables a broad-based, multiple-investigator survey of insect and arachnid biodiversity in southern South America. The arthropod fauna of Chile and Argentina requires this immediate and detailed attention for at least three reasons. First, just as with the rain forests of much of the New World tropics, south temperate forests are currently being destroyed at an alarming rate, and the fauna must be sampled, rapidly and exhaustively, while such studies are still possible. Second, the fauna includes many taxa of special phylogenetic significance; the most primitive members of many taxa are already known to be endemic to the area. And third, the fauna is of special significance to biogeographers, for whom the interrelationships of south temperate biotas in general have constituted a major focus of interest and effort for over a century. The survey will allow accurate identification of the smallest areas of endemism within Chile and Argentina, and thereby help separate those forests which need to be maintained in as pristine a state as possible from those which can best be used as sustainable resources without endangering unique elements of the biota. The award will fund one graduate student and two postdoctoral fellows as well about 118 person-weeks of field work.