Project details

With funding from the UK government's Darwin Initiative for the Survival of Species, scientists from the Museum and the Fundación Moisés Bertoni (FMB) carried out an inventory of the plants and some selected insect groups in the Mbaracayú Reserve from 1995 to 1998.

Participants

Two botanists (Griselda Marín and Bélen Jiménez) and one entomologist (Antonio Claudio Ferreira da Costa) worked full time in the Reserve.

Other project participants included:

  • John Kochalka and Bolivar Garcete of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural of Paraguay
  • Claudia Mercolli and Alberto Yanosky of the Fundación Moisés Bertoni
  • other botanists and entomologists who identified material sent to them

Results

We have published four field guides for organisms in the area, for: 

  • wasps
  • ferns
  • medicinal plants used by local communities
  • common plants encountered along the tourist trails

All of these are available from the Museum or the FMB; more details can be found in the bibliography. A checklist of all the plant species found in the reserve was also published in 2010, which can be downloaded here.

As part of this project, we recorded all Paraguayan specimens housed in the herbarium of the Museum so that this information could be made available to Paraguayan botanists and those interested in the Paraguayan flora.

The database presented here is the result of this effort.