The Darwin Initiative

Darwin expeditions to Costa Rica continue to record new species

The Darwin project Baseline Tools for Management of PN La Amistad continues to document new species collected during its expeditions to the Talamanca Mountains of Costa Rica. One of the latest additions, a new species of Pilea (Urticaceae) is published in Phytotaxa.

Pilea matama A.K. Monro is a medium-sized herb known only from the Caribbean flank of the Matama Ridge in the Talamanca Mountains of Costa Rica, in wet tropical montane forest between 1300-1500m above sea level.

Pilea is a species-rich genus of the family Urticaceae. The genus is distributed widely through the tropics, subtropics, and warm temperate zone.

The newly described species is just one of several plants, amphibians, and insects discovered by the project during expeditions to the bi-national Parque Nacional La Amistad, including a dung beetle named after Darwin and the Darwin Initiative. The park extends to some 400,000 ha, half in Costa Rica and half in Panama.

More information is available on the project's official web page http://www.inbio.ac.cr/pila-darwin/.

A. Disposition of leaves and inflorescences (Photo A.K. Monro). B. Habit in the field (Photo A.K. Monro). C. Staminate inflorescence with flower at anthesis (Photo A.K. Monro). D. Pistillate inflorescence with receptive flowers (Photo A.K. Monro).

Page last modified: Tuesday, 26 January 2010

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