For every species of mammal, 300 arthropod species lurk in the rainforest
Thursday, December 13, 2012 - 14:00
in Biology & Nature
A new study from the rainforests of Panama provides an unprecedented level of detail regarding the diversity and distribution of arthropod species from the soil to the forest canopy. Yves Basset, scientific coordinator of the CTFS Arthropod Initiative at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, led an international team on Project IBISCA-Panama to sample, sort, catalogue, and finally estimate that a 6,000 hectare forest hosts a total of around 25,000 arthropod species – a figure vastly outnumbering that of better-studied organisms. The study will be published online on Dec. 13 in the journal Science.