Costa Rica has long been held up as a=
modern conservation success story. This small Central American natio=
n practices a national conservation policy that promotes sustainable develo=
pment, ecotourism and biodiversity conservation (Sanchez-Azofeifa et al. 2001). Currently, 25% of Costa Rica’s terri=
tory is categorized as some form of protected or conservation areas. =
These protected zones are comprised of both public and private lands (INBio=
2007, Sanchez-Azofeifa et al. 2003).
While Costa Rica has a landmass of on=
ly 51,100 km2 (0.03% global landmass), its diverse habitat=
s and microclimes support over 500, 000 known species (4% total global spec=
ies) (INBio 2007). Of the known and catalogued species in Costa Rica,=
arthropods account for approximately 365,000 species (INBio 2007). I=
t is thought that a large percentage of Costa Rican arthropods species are =
still undocumented or understudied (Zumbado 2006).
While the flora and fauna of Costa Rican trop=
ical lowland forests have been studied extensively, much less information i=
s available regarding the species diversity of tropical highland forests.&n=
bsp; Tropical highland locales, compared to lowland regions, experience a g=
reater variance in weather conditions in addition to lower ambient temperat=
ures. Consequently, tropical highland forests exhibit lower species d=
iversity than tropical lowland forests (Wesselingh et al. 1999, Wesselingh et al. 2000).<=
/span>
&nbs=
p; Nocturnal arthropod population surveys were c=
onducted in Mastatal, Costa Rica, to study the abundance and diversity of a=
rthropods in two distinct habitats. The purpose of these nocturnal studies were to investigate (i) arthropod spe=
cies richness and diversity in a secondary growth forest; (ii) how trap col=
ors influence the diversity and abundance of specimens collection; (i=
ii) how vertical strata preferences influence canopy arthropod diversity.
The results generated found that the =
dominant arthropod attracted to light traps in our study were the morphospe=
cies Diptera-mosquito. The mosquito data tended to overwhelm all othe=
r arthropod population trends, so calculations were made both inclusive and=
exclusive of mosquito data. While there were no significant di=
fferences between secondary forest collection sites when continuous spectru=
m lights traps were hung, specific wavelength light traps attracted arthrop=
od populations that were significantly different when statistically analyze=
d. The vertical strata tested also failed to show any significant dif=
ferences between the testing levels.
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