These two parataxonomists (“gusaneros” in the vernacular) – Calixto Moraga and Manuel Ríos - at Estación Biológica Pitilla are returning to the caterpillar rearing barn from a rain forest search, with their victims in bags with their food plants and bearing magnificent shelter from the elements.

<p>(2010). Image credit, Daniel Janzen.</p

Ruth Franco, a BioLep parataxonomist, is explaining DNA barcoding of ACG Lepidoptera to the University of Costa Rica (left, Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez) and the university (center, Dr. Xing-Jie Liang) and government community (right, Dr. Jia Shangang) of the Peoples' Republic of China.

<p>The white specimen boxes (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0018123#pone-0018123-g004" target="_blank">Figure 4</a>) in the background are filled with thousands of barcoded vouchers of moths and butterflies that were collected and barcoded by Ruth and her three parataxonomist teammates. (September 2009, BioLep Building, Estación Biológica, Sector Santa Rosa). Image credit, Roger Blanco.</p

This map outlines Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) Life Zones as overlain with caterpillar inventory rearing barns (red circles) and general transit access roads and trails (red lines).

<p>The 12 Life Zones cover, starting from the left, marine (light blue) and dry forest (browns and yellows) to the upper elevation cloud forest (dark blue) and rain forest (various greens), with the expected intergrades. (2010). Image credit, Waldy Medina and Daniel Janzen.</p

These two parataxonomists (Freddy Quesada and Harry Ramirez of Estación Biológica Cacao) are doing routine data entry in the rearing barn on the day of caterpillar collection.

<p>Plastic bags hanging in the background contain pupae waiting to eclose, while caterpillars in their bags with fresh foliage are outside in indirect sunlight. Harry is ensuring that Freddy enters the correct species name for the food plant in the record they are constructing (February 2003). Image credit, Daniel Janzen.</p

This is the majority of the members of the ACG Costa Rican resident parataxonomist team (a.k.a “gusaneros”) in 2008 (Estación Biológica Santa Rosa).

<p>Each is labeled with the number of years he or she has worked conducting the ACG caterpillar inventory, and adult moth and butterfly inventory (BioLep). Image credit, Daniel Janzen.</p

These two BioLep parataxonomists (Hazel Cambronero and Sergio Ríos) are collecting at a car-battery-powered light (Sector Santa Rosa) in order to construct the adult Lepidoptera ACG barcode library.

<p>Each moth is collected individually into a small used-only-once plastic bag to avoid contamination with the scales from other moths, and then frozen, later to be sorted while still in the bag, before spreading and drying for subsequent de-legging for barcoding. More than 4,000 species of moths have been collected from this particular light in the three decades of moth inventory of ACG. (June 2006). Image credit, Daniel Janzen.</p

This parataxonomist (left, blue shirt, gray hat, Johan Vargas) is describing caterpillars [<b>8]</b>, [16<b> </b>] and caterpillar barcoding genetics to an ACG teacher (right, beige ACG shirt, Alban Jimenez) in the ACG Programa de Educación Biológica (PEB) at the Santa Rosa rearing barn during a special weekend reward course for outstanding 4–6^th-graders from neighboring schools.

<p>(June 2010). Image credit, Pablo Vasquez.</p

This is a box (same size as the white box in <b>Figure 8</b>) of reared, databased, spread and oven-dried ACG small moths and butterflies, in the form that they were delivered by a parataxonomist (Johan Vargas) to the Santa Rosa clearing center.

<p>Each specimen has its unique voucher code on its pin, and each will lose one leg to the barcoding process by Tanya Dapkey as it passes through the central clearing center at the University of Pennsylvania on its way to permanent residence in the Smithsonian Institution, INBio, Canadian National Collection, or other museum. (August 2010). Image credit, Daniel Janzen.</p

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