Insects and Spiders
Edited by Paul HansonArthropods (e.g., insects, spiders, mites, crustaceans)
are the most diverse group of organisms in the bio-
sphere. Several families of insects (e.g., staphylinid
beetles, ichneumonid wasps) contain more species
than all vertebrates combined. Most arthropods do not
yet have scientific names. Little is known about the
life histories of most species. The insects of Costa Rica
and neighboring Panama have received more atten-
tion than any other tropical region of comparable size,
but it is mainly limited to species descriptions and
distribution records. I and colleagues who have con-
tributed subsections throughout this chapter draw
upon the published studies from Monteverde, but no
attempt has been made to list all insect species re-
ported from Monteverde.
This chapter differs from others in that some con-
tributors focus on tropical cloud forests in general
rather than on only Monteverde. The justification is
that for most insects, altitude is the single most im-
portant factor determining distribution. Most species
show widespread geographic distributions but re-
stricted altitudinal distributions. One intensively
sampled cloud forest in Costa Rica is Zurqui de
Moravia (1600 m), from which considerable informa-
tion is drawn for this chapter. We have included most
of the insect groups that have been studied in Monte-
verde: spittlebugs, treehoppers, rove beetles, scarab
beetles, longhorn beetles, butterflies, social wasps,
ants, and bees. Major orders of insects not included
from this chapter are mayflies, cockroaches, termites,
earwigs, barklice, thrips, and lacewings. Termites and
other social insects are less prominent in cloud for-
ests than in lowland forests. Spiders are the only non-
insect arthropods included; the information is from
a cloud forest at a similar elevation in Colombia.
Cloud forests are defined here as forests higher than
1200 m. Our knowledge of cloud forest arthropods is
so fragmentary that generalizations are premature.
This chapter provides preliminary information on
natural history to stimulate entomologists to consider
cloud forests as distinct from lowland rain forests. We
include practical information on the conservation of
cloud forest arthropods, many of which are vital com-
ponents of the ecosystem. For example, the increase
in outdoor lighting in Monteverde may be detrimen-
tal to populations of many nocturnal insects (see Sec.
4.4.3). Conservationists must consider the stunning
diversity of microhabitats that they occupy (see Sec.4