New Species and Combinations in Costa Rican Orchids

Two new combinations, lectotypifications and a new name for Costa Rican Palicourea s.l.

Species of the complex and diverse genera Psychotria and Palicourea are common but little-known elements in many tropical forest ecosystems. DNA-phylogenetic studies and a re-evaluation of morphological characters have recently shown that species of Psychotria subg. Heteropsychotria are nested within Palicourea s.l., which was traditionally separated by exhibiting a bird-pollinated (vs. insect-...

Costa Rican Natural History

Mining the Costa Rican Web

There is much to say about the structure and composition of a local web. Identification of authorities, topics and web communities can be used to improve search engines, change a portal design or to develop marketing strategies. The Costa Rican web was chosen as a test case for web mining analysis. After the study we obtained several descriptors of the web as well as the answers to typical ques...

Panbiogeographical analysis of Costa Rican freshwater fishes.

Track analysis and Parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE) were performed to analyze the distribution pattern of Costa Rican freshwater fishes. A basic matrix (presence/absence) was prepared using the distribution of 77 freshwater fish. The data were analyzed with CLIQUE software in order to find generalized tracks (cliques). Data also were analyzed with the software NONA and Winclada version 1....

Deforestation Spillovers from Costa Rican Protected Areas

Resumen Spillovers can significantly reduce or enhance the effects of land-use policies, yet there exists little rigorous evidence concerning their magnitudes. We examine how national parks within Costa Rica affect the clearing of forest nearby. We find that average deforestation spillover impacts are not significant within 0-5km and 5-10km rings around parks. However, we argue that this averag...