science

Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad

Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad rather than just read about it. In short: The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is the national institute for biodiversity and conservation in Costa Rica. Created at the end of the 1980s, despite having national status, it is a privately run institution that works closely with various government agencies, universities, the business sector and other public and private entities inside and outside of the country.

Key takeaways

Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is the national institute for biodiversity and conservation in Costa Rica. Created at the end of the 1980s, despite having national status, it is a privately run institution that works closely with various government agencies, universities, the business sector and other public and private entities inside and outside of the country. The goals of the institute are to complete an inventory of the natural heritage of Costa Rica, promote conservation and identify chemical compounds and genetic material present in living organisms that could be used by industries such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or others. The institute has a collection of over three million insects representing tens of thousands of species all recorded in Atta, a computer database that contains all of the data such as exact location (including GPS coordinates), date of collection, name of the collector and method of collection. Due to impending insolvency, in March 2015, the INBio's biodiversity collection and database will be taken over by the state (and returned to the Natural History Museum, from which much of it was taken when INBio was founded), and its theme park converted to government operation. INBio will move forward as a "think tank" type institute with money raised from transfer of most of its assets to the government.

History Costa Rica decided in 1989 that some sort of organization was necessary to study the biodiversity of Costa Rica. The government did not have the ability at the time to fund a new organization so a handful of scientists and entrepreneurs took the initiative and created the non-profit organization now known as INBio. Among the founders of the institution was Rodrigo Gámez, a remarkable and well known Costa Rican scientist who has a strong desire for teaching people about the importance of biodiversity and its conservation. He received the MAGÓN award (Premio Nacional de Cultura Magón) in 2012, which is an award of great importance that is given every year to someone who has contributed to Costa Rica, in this case related to science. In that same year he received an international award known as the MIDORI prize, given to him in Japan, by a Japanese institution; he has also received a great number of other awards in the past. Rodrigo Gámez is still president at the institution. In 1995 INBio was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research. In 2014, INBio was jointly awarded the Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award presented by the Asahi Glass Foundation, with Professor Daniel Janzen.

Structure There are many different components to INBio such as Bio-prospecting, INBioparque, INBio editorial, and the many different research areas such as arthropods, fungi, and plants. Bio-prospecting is the division dealing with finding useful products from the specimens collected. INBio has worked with organizations such as Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. INBioparque is a natural park in Santo Domingo, Heredia, just 85 km (53 mi) north/east of downtown San Jose in Costa Rica. The research programs vary from studying the spider family Oonopidae to compiling a book with all of the genera of known and described flies in Central America. Such a project has never been done in a tropical place with such a large biodiversity.

Areas of activity

The institute's work has chiefly developed in the following areas:

Inventory and monitoring Generating information on the diversity of the country's species and ecosystems. It currently owns a collection of more than 3 million specimens, each identified and cataloged, including arthropods, plants, fungi and mollusks. Furthermore, information on the country's different ecosystems is generated.

Conservation Integrating the information generated by INBio into decision-making processes for the protection and sustainable use of its biodiversity, for both the public and private sectors. INBio works closely with SINAC (Sistema de Áreas de Conservación; Conservation Areas System), being considered a strategic partner in the protection of the country's protected areas.

Communication and education Sharing information and understanding of biodiversity with different sectors of the public, seeking to create a wider knowledge of its value. Most of this effort is centered in the INBiopark, a theme-park opened in 2000 which aims to bring families and visitors closer to the rich Costa Rican nature. Furthermore, through other methods INBio looks to strengthen the environmental component of the Costa Rican population's actions and decisions.

Bioinformatics Developing and applying technological tools to support the process of generation, administration, analysis and dissemination of information on biodiversity. The information on each specimen in the biodiversity inventory can be found in a database named Atta, accessible to the public through INBio's webpage.

Bioprospecting Searching for sustainable, commercially applicable uses of the resources of biodiversity. INBio has been a pioneering institution in establishing research agreements for the search for chemical substances, genes, etc., present in plants, insects, marine organisms and microorganisms, which could be used by the pharmaceutical, medical, biotechnology, cosmetics, nutritional and agricultural industries. INBio, although it is a national initiative given its scope, has become an international force for trying to integrate conservation and development. The application of scientific knowledge of biodiversity to economic activities such as ecotourism, medicine, agriculture or the development of mechanisms of collection and payment for environmental services exemplify this force for integration, and are part of the activities which attract the attention of the international community.

Publishing From 1996 to 2011, Editorial InBio published important books about specific aspects of Costa Rican and Latin American biodiversity:

1996 Los Bosques de Roble (Quercus) de la Cordillera de Talamanca, Costa Rica: Biodiversidad, Ecología, Conservación y Desarrollo by Maarten Kappelle (1996) ISBN 9968702056

1997 Árboles de Costa Rica / Trees of Costa Rica by various authors (1997-2004) In 3 volumes. 1: ISBN 9977750033 3: ISBN 9968702889 Árboles del Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio: Trees of Manuel Antonio National Park by Patrick Harmon (2004) ISBN 9968702897

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Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad

In research: Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Academic publishing companies, Biodiversity, Institutions of Costa Rica, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad in simple terms?

Why does Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad.