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

厄瓜多尔安第斯蝴蝶区系调查该奖项的目的是帮助对世界上正在减少的生物多样性进行编目，并向专家和公众提供这方面的知识。蝴蝶可能是最熟悉、最显眼、研究最充分的一类昆虫。这一奖项将有助于全面调查厄瓜多尔安第斯山脉的蝴蝶动物群，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约2600种蝴蝶的地理和海拔分布数据，并严格评估所有物种的分类地位；继续改进厄瓜多尔的国家收集工作，并培训厄瓜多尔科学家掌握生物清单技术。实地工作将在该国采样不足的地区进行，集中在现有收藏中代表性较差的分类群，并使用各种未得到充分利用的实地技术，以最大限度地增加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国家最完整的蝴蝶动物群清单。据估计，研究区域内需要描述的物种多达200种。识别钥匙将在期刊上发表，并以互动的电子形式向非专业人员开放。关于所有物种分布的信息将以电子数据库的形式提供给厄瓜多尔境内的主要保护团体，并在万维网上提供。除了用于分子研究的酒精保存材料的集合外，还将在美国和东道国保存全面的标本收藏。希望东道国的收集和发表的分类学研究将为长期的、全国性的蝴蝶系统学、生物学和保护研究计划提供基础。分布数据集将是任何一组新热带昆虫可用的最大、最广泛和最精细的空间尺度。这些数据的潜在应用有很多，包括检验关于西安第斯(乔科)动物群和两个山坡上的山地动物群起源的生物地理假说，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图，调查物种丰富度和特有性的模式，以及确定这些高度受威胁的安第斯森林中保护的优先地区。

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.