Insect and Arachnid Biodiversity in Southern South America

这一奖项使得对南美洲南部昆虫和蜘蛛类生物多样性的广泛、多调查者调查成为可能。智利和阿根廷的节肢动物群需要这种立即和详细的关注，至少有三个原因。首先，正如新大陆大部分热带地区的热带雨林一样，南温带森林目前正以惊人的速度遭到破坏，必须在这样的研究仍有可能的情况下，迅速和详尽地对动物进行采样。其次，该动物群包括许多具有特殊系统发育意义的分类群；许多分类群中最原始的成员已被认为是该地区特有的。第三，这些动物群对生物地理学家具有特殊的意义，对他们来说，南温带生物群的相互关系通常构成了一个多世纪以来的主要兴趣和努力焦点。这项调查将能够准确地识别智利和阿根廷境内最小的特有区域，从而帮助将那些需要尽可能保持原始状态的森林与那些可以在不危及生物群独特元素的情况下最好地用作可持续资源的森林区分开来。该奖项将资助一名研究生和两名博士后研究员，以及大约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.