The Caddisflies (Trichoptera) of Costa Rica.

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9400632 Holzenthal This request seeks funding, primarily in the form of graduate student research assistantships and summer faculty salary, to complete systematics research and education on the Trichoptera, or caddisfly, fauna of Costa Rica and the Neotropics. An important new component of the project will be emphasis on the graduate training of a Costa Rican in systematic entomology. Information and data generated through the project, specifically the English-language text of the manual and specimen level locality and taxonomic information, will be entered on a database and made available over the Internet through Gopher. Caddisflies are closely related to butterflies and moths and are best known, especially by those interested in fly fishing, for the cases and capture nets constructed by their aquatic larvae. Caddisfly larvae are ubiquitous in fresh waters worldwide, but are especially diverse in unpolluted rivers and steams. Larvae are important in aquatic food chains and are used as biological indicators of the well-being of freshwater habitats. The objectives of this research are to determine the full diversity and distribution of the caddisfly fauna of Costa Rica and to publish a species-level, Spanish-language manual of the fauna. When completed, this manual will be the first of its kind in Latin America. Since the manual will be based on revisionary taxonomic and phylogenetic research of monophyletic taxa, its production will extend benefits beyond Costa Rica to trichopterology and the study of Neotropical insects in general. The human resources, manual, and database developed under this project will serve important roles for future research on the taxonomy, biology, and conservation of Trichoptera and their habitats in the New World tropics.