Arthropod Diversity in a Lowland Tropical Rainforest

作为热带研究组织（一个由45所美国哥斯达黎加大学和博物馆组成的联合体）和国家生物多样性研究所（一个哥斯达黎加非政府组织INBio）之间的一个合作项目，将为La Selva启动一份热带雨林昆虫、蜘蛛和螨虫的生物多样性清单，一个生物资源丰富、科学活跃的生物站，位于哥斯达黎加的大西洋低地。该项目的这一阶段旨在为昆虫、蜘蛛和螨虫的几个重点类群，包括雨林栖息地中一些最重要的类群，编制完整的物种级清单。这些清单将基于生态结构，可重复的采样方法，以及较少结构的补充收集。更广泛的调查小组，每个小组包括一个焦点小组，将单独使用结构化抽样技术进行盘点。将探索统计方法来估计研究区域的昆虫、蜘蛛和螨虫种类的总数，使用群体的完整清单数据来评估这些方法，并校准更广泛的调查群体的物种数量估计。采样设计将允许评估生境类型、植被结构、物种和季节对总体物种丰富度的贡献。这些估计有望提供关于热带雨林昆虫和蜘蛛物种多样性的最现实和最全面的数据，以及任何热带雨林螨虫动物群的多样性估计。这些群体或有机体，虽然很好地代表了地球上的物种，但仍然是最不为人所知的。标本将被整合到INBio已经在进行的国家生物多样性清单中，从而将La Selva调查材料置于更大的地理和生物背景中，促进INBio日益增长的国际专家网络对这些材料的进一步研究，并确保标本的永久可及性。该项目旨在促进北美和哥斯达黎加科学家之间广泛的新合作途径。

As a collaborative project between the Organization for Tropical Studies (a consortium of 45 U.S. Costa Rican universities and museums) and the National Biodiversity Institute (INBio, a Costa Rican nongovernmental organization), a biodiversity inventory of tropical rainforest insects, spiders, and mites will initiated for La Selva, a biotically rich and scientifically active biological station situated in the Atlantic lowlands of Costa Rica. This stage of the project aims to produce full, species-level inventories for several focal groups of insects, spiders, and mites, including some of the most important groups in rainforest habitats. These inventories will be based on ecologically structured, repeatable sampling methods, as well as on less- structure supplemental collecting. A must broader range of survey groups, each including a focal group, will be inventoried using the structured sampling techniques alone. Statistical methods will be explored for estimating the total number of insect, spider, and mite species in the study areas, using the full inventory data for the groups to evaluate these methods and to calibrate estimates of species number for the broader survey groups. The sampling design will permit evaluation of the contributions of habitat would type vegetation structure species, and season to overall species richness. These estimated promise to provide the most realistic and comprehensive data yet available on the diversity of insect and spider species of tropical rainforests, and diversity estimates for any rainforest mite fauna. These groups or organisms, while representing well overall the species on earth, are still among the most poorly known. Specimens will be integrated into the national biodiversity inventory already underway at INBio, thus placing the La Selva survey material in a larger geographical and biological context, promoting further study of this material by INBio's growing international network of specialists, and ensuring permanent accessibility of the specimens. The project is structured to promote extensive new avenues of collaboration between North American and Costa Rican scientists.