Inventory of Caterpillars, Parasitoids and Food Plants of a Costa Rican Dry, Cloud, and Rain Forest: Caterpillar and Species Discovery, and Setting Them Up for Society

该项目为期5年（2005-2010年）的持续生物多样性清单所有9，600种大型毛虫（世界毛虫生物群的4%），它们的食物植物关系，以及它们的寄生物（寄蝇、寄生蜂、线虫、真菌），在哥斯达黎加西北部瓜纳卡斯特保护区（ACG）470平方英里的热带干旱森林及其毗邻的雨林和云雾林中，一个巨大的国家公园。 它的范围从0-2000米海拔，包括所有三个主要的热带陆地生态系统以外的沙漠和帕拉莫。 毛毛虫是由一个由19名经验丰富的哥斯达黎加副axonomists组成的团队发现和饲养的，并由PI进行培训和指导。 由此产生的数据-成千上万的图像及其相关的自然历史-都在项目公共网站www.example.com上公布和提供http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu.The收集的信息是a）一个全球试点项目的基础，该项目通过当地社会的非破坏性生物多样性发展来展示热带保护，B）通过互联网提供世界上4%的蝴蝶和蛾生物多样性的自然历史和营养关系，以及c）对世界物种进行DNA条形码的新倡议的主要刺激和数据，以便任何人随时随地快速识别，从而导致全球生物文学的大规模增加。

The project is 5 years (2005-2010) of an ongoing biodiversity inventory (= setting up for use by all sectors of society) of all 9,600 species of macrocaterpillars (4% of the world caterpillar biota), their food plant relationships, and their parasitoids (tachinid flies, parasitic wasps, nematodes, fungi), in the 470 square miles of tropical dry forest and its contiguous rain forest and cloud forest in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica - effectively a huge national park. It ranges from 0-2000 m elevation and includes all three of the major tropical terrestrial ecosystems other than desert and paramo. The caterpillars are found and reared by a team of 19 experienced Costa Rican parataxonomists with training and guidance by the PI. The resulting data - tens of thousands of images and their associated natural history - is both published and available on the project public web site http://janzen.sas.upenn.edu.The information gathered is a) the base of a global pilot project demonstrating tropical conservation through non-damaging biodiversity development by local society, b) the provision of the natural history and trophic relationships of 4% of the world's butterfly and moth biodiversity via the internet, and c) major stimulus and data for the new initiative to DNA barcode the world's species for easy identification by anyone anywhere anytime, fast, leading to a massive increase in global bioliteracy.