Funding

We have reached our target funding!

Thank you to all those who helped with sponsorship.

The expedition will take place between 29 June and 30 August 2009 with additional time for preparations, evaluation and reporting.

The total cost of the trip for four people is £12,000 broken down as follows:

• Equipment       £1500
• Medical                £600
• Training               £400
• Flights               £4000
• Lodging            £2000
• Food                   £2200
• Insurance            £150
• Permits                 £150
• Publication        £700
• Contingency     £300

Donations

We have now reached our funding target and do not need further sponsorship.

Thank you for sponsoring this vital work and helping conservation through science.

Our Goal

Our goal is to help protect the rainforests and the planet through conducting scientific research to further understand rainforest systems and the effects of exploitation and destruction.

Our Research

We will be working under the guidance of Dr. Angel Solis and conducting three scientific biodiversity experiments using scarab (dung) beetles and butterflies, both will provide excellent indicators for biodiversity in the rainforest and allow calibration and comparison between different animal groups.

Our questions are as follows;

• Does disturbance of the forest by farming, logging, agro-forestry etc affect biodiversity?
• How does diversity vary over a small area?
• Is there bias in the current standard net trapping method?

Rainforests are complex systems where many factors play a part in defining biodiversity. Other findings may be possible.

Location

The national survey being completed by InBio currently has highlighted the Corcovado national park as a gap in the research cover and and therefore the eminent entomologist Angel Solis from InBio is keen to collaborate and use our data. The Corcovado national park in the Osa peninsula in Costa Rica in Central American is tropical rainforest. Despite covering only 0.03% of the Earth’s surface, it possesses 5.4% of the world’s biodiversity.

By contrasting an area within a protected national park with one outside the park that has undergone much exploitation and destruction, we believe we will reveal vital clues to the fragility and health of the ecosystem.

The country is supportive of conservation work and has useful links with organisations for carrying out research.

Our Collaborators

We will be directly collaborating with InBio, who are a non-government organisation set up in 1989, whose goal is to complete a survey of biodiversity across the whole of Costa Rica in order to conserve and sustainably exploit their natural habitats. To date they have collected 3million specimens of arthropods, plants, fungi and molluscs, which is an incredible achievement, but there is still work to be done!

We will be working alongside InBio and more specifically Dr. Angel Solis, an expert in entomology and scarab beetle work. We will share all our results with them in order to further their survey of Costa Rica and also return some of our collection to them for their archives. To learn more about InBio and their work please visit www.inbio.ac.cr. Our research will be circulated in both the wider scientific community and amongst the scientists already working in Costa Rica in order to benefit the conservation effort.