Insect and Arachnid Biodiversity in Southern South America

该奖项使对南美洲南部昆虫和蛛形动物生物多样性的广泛调查成为可能。智利和阿根廷的节肢动物动物群需要这种立即和详细的关注，至少有三个原因。首先，就像新大陆热带地区的热带雨林一样，南温带的森林目前正以惊人的速度遭到破坏，必须对动物群进行迅速而详尽的取样，而这样的研究仍然是可能的。第二，动物群包括许多具有特殊系统发育意义的分类群；人们已经知道，许多分类群中最原始的成员是该地区特有的。第三，动物群对生物地理学家来说具有特殊的意义，对他们来说，一个多世纪以来，南温带生物区系的相互关系一直是他们感兴趣和努力的主要焦点。这项调查将使我们能够准确地确定智利和阿根廷境内最小的特有地区，从而有助于区分哪些森林需要保持尽可能原始的状态，哪些森林可以最好地作为可持续资源使用，而不会危及生物区系的独特元素。该奖项将资助一名研究生和两名博士后以及大约118人周的实地研究。

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.