Costa Rica has one of the greatest percentages (26%) of protected land in the world. The National Protected Areas System (NPAS) of Costa Rica was established in 1976 and currently includes >190 protected areas within seven different protection categories. The effectiveness of the NPAS to represent species, populations, and areas with high species richness has not been properly evaluated. Such e...

the province of Bocas del Toro, Panama, Oncidium maduroi Dressler is here reported for the first time from Costa Rica, based on the following collection: Alajuela: San Carlos, road to the Río La Vieja, along a path at the right of the road about 4 km before the river, 1 000 m, collected by C. Cambronero Araya in 1995, flowered in cultivation, 7 October 2000, F. Pupulin 2437 (USJ, SEL). In Costa...

BACKGROUND Costa Rica, like other developing countries, is experiencing an increasing burden of chronic conditions such as diabetes mellitus (DM), especially among its elderly population. This article has two goals: (1) to assess the level of metabolic control among the diabetic population age >or= 60 years old in Costa Rica, and (2) to test whether diabetic elderly patients of community health...

The Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS)/Organización para Estudios Tropicales (OET) has evolved in many ways since its founding in 1963 as a non-profit consortium offering graduate courses and facilitating research in tropical ecology in Costa Rica. By 2002, its international membership included about 65 institutions, including four from Costa Rica. It had developed three Costa Rican field ...

OBJECTIVE The relationship of education, psychiatric diagnoses, and use of psychotropic medication has been explored in the United States, but little is known about this relationship in poorer countries, despite the high burden of mental illness in these countries. This study estimated educational gradients in diagnosis and psychotropic drug use in the United States and Costa Rica, a middle-inc...

Costa Rica has been successful in attracting high-tech foreign direct investment (FDI). An aggressive FDI-assisted development strategy was pursued by the country in the 1980s as a response to the economic crisis; yet there are serious concerns about the effectiveness of such strategy from a development point of view. In this paper, we focus on the effects of the FDI-assisted development strate...

Citation: Ruiz P, Mana S, Gutiérrez A, Alarcón G, Garro J and Soto GJ (2018) Geomorphological Insights on Human-Volcano Interactions and Use of Volcanic Materials in Pre-Hispanic Cultures of Costa Rica through the Holocene. Front. Earth Sci. 6:13. doi: 10.3389/feart.2018.00013 Geomorphological Insights on Human-Volcano Interactions and Use of Volcanic Materials in Pre-Hispanic Cultures of Costa...

Keys in Spanish and English are given for the genera of Chrysomelinae known from Costa Rica. For each genus, a list of species compiled from collections in the University of Costa Rica, the National Biodiversity Institute, and the entomological literature is presented. The genus Planagetes Chevrolat 1843 is recorded for the first time from Central America, and the genus Leptinotarsa Stål 1858 i...

Historically, the name Phyllodonta latrata (Guenée) has been applied to what is a complex of three undescribed species in Costa Rica. They are very similar in maculation, but can be differentiated by genitalic characters and barcodes. P. alajuela Sullivan, sp. n. occurs at lower altitudes in the northwestern part of Costa Rica whereas P. intermediata Sullivan, sp. n. and P. esperanza Sullivan, ...

The genus Symmerista Hübner (Notodontidae, Nystaleinae) is reviewed for Costa Rica, based on 49 wild-caught specimens. Four species are newly described: Symmerista luisdiegogomezi Chacón, Symmerista inbioi Chacón, Symmerista minaei Chacón and Symmerista aura Chacón. All are from the cloud forests of the Talamanca moutain range, southern Costa Rica. Photographs of the adults, male and female gen...