Survey of the Andean Butterfly Fauna of Ecuador (Insecta: Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea)

该奖项的目的是为世界上日益减少的生物多样性的编目作出贡献，并使专家和公众能够获得这些知识。蝴蝶可能是最熟悉、最显眼、研究最充分的昆虫群。该奖项将有助于对厄瓜多尔安第斯山脉的蝴蝶动物群进行全面调查，安第斯山脉是地球上物种最丰富但也受到威胁的栖息地之一。该项目有两个主要目标：汇编和综合厄瓜多尔安第斯山脉地区约2600种蝴蝶的地理和海拔分布数据，并对所有物种的分类状况进行批判性评估；并继续改善厄瓜多尔的国家收集，培训厄瓜多尔科学家掌握生物清查技术。实地工作将在该国取样不足的地区进行，集中于现有标本中代表性不足的分类类群，并使用各种未充分利用的实地技术，最大限度地增加从每个研究地点记录的已知和未描述物种的数量。该项目将产生安第斯山脉国家中最完整的蝴蝶动物群清单。据估计，在研究区域内需要描述的物种多达200种。识别密钥将以互动式电子形式发表在期刊上，供非专业人员查阅。关于所有物种分布情况的资料将作为电子数据库提供给厄瓜多尔境内的主要养护团体，并在万维网上提供。全面的标本收集将存放在美国和东道国，此外还将收集酒精保存的材料用于分子研究。希望东道国境内的收集和已发表的分类学研究将为蝴蝶系统学、生物学和保护方面的长期国家研究计划提供基础。分布数据集将是最大的，最广泛的，在最好的空间尺度上可用于任何一组新热带昆虫。这些数据的潜在应用有很多，包括检验关于西安第斯（乔科）动物群和两个斜坡上的山地动物群起源的生物地理学假设，检查海拔梯度对物种丰富度的影响，测试蝴蝶和蝴蝶群作为生物多样性指标的价值，绘制全国生物地理过渡带的强度和类型，调查物种丰富度和地方性的格局，并确定这些受到高度威胁的安第斯森林的优先保护区域。

Survey of the Andean Butterfly Fauna of Ecuador The purpose of this award is to contribute to the cataloging of the World's declining biodiversity and to make that knowledge available to specialists and the general public. Butterflies constitute perhaps the most familiar, conspicuous and well-studied group of insects. This award will be instrumental in aiding a comprehensive survey of the butterfly fauna of the Ecuadorian Andes, one of the most species-rich but also threatened habitats on Earth. This project has two main objectives: to compile and synthesize data on the geographic and elevational distribution of the c. 2600 species of butterflies occurring in Andean Ecuador, with critical evaluation of the taxonomic status of all species; and to continue to improve the national collection in Ecuador and train Ecuadorian scientists in bioinventory techniques. Field work will take place in under-sampled regions of the country, concentrate on taxonomic groups poorly represented in existing collections, and use a variety of underutilized field techniques to maximize the number of known and undescribed species recorded from each study site. This project will result in the most complete inventory of the butterfly fauna for any Andean country. It is estimated that as many as 200 species within the study area will need to be described. Identification keys will be published in journals and in interactive, electronic form to be accessible to non-specialists. Information on the distributions for all species will be presented as an electronic database supplied to principal conservation groups within Ecuador and made available on the World Wide Web. Comprehensive specimen collections will be deposited in the USA and the host country, in addition to a collection of alcohol-preserved material for molecular study. It is hoped that the collections within the host country and published taxonomic studies will provide the basis for a long-term, national research program on butterfly systematics, biology and conservation. The distributional data set will be the largest, most extensive and at the finest spatial scale available for any group of Neotropical insects. The potential applications of these data are numerous, including testing biogeographical hypotheses concerning the origins of the west Andean (Choco) fauna and the montane faunas on both slopes, examining the effects of elevational gradients on species richness, testing the value of butterflies and butterfly groups as indicators of biodiversity, mapping the strength and type of biogeographic transition zones throughout the country, investigating patterns of species richness and endemism, and identifying priority areas for conservation in these highly threatened Andean forests.