Reptiles of Costa Rica

The Dryophthoridae of Costa Rica and Panama are reviewed. A checklist is presented of the 127 species in Costa Rica and 103 species in Panama. Keys are presented to genera and species. Twenty-four new species are described as follows: Mesocordylus redelmeieri Anderson (type locality; Guanacaste, Costa Rica), Cactophagus dragoni Anderson (type locality; Chiriqui, Panama), C. gasbarrinorum Anderson (type locality; Chiriqui, Panama), C. lineatus Anderson (type locality; San Jose, Costa Rica), C. lingorum Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), C. morrisi Anderson (type locality; Chiriqui, Panama), C. riesenorum Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), C. silron Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), C. sunatoriorum Anderson (type locality; Chiriqui, Panama), Metamasius atwoodi Anderson (type locality; Cocos Island, Costa Rica), M. bellorum Anderson (type locality; Chiriqui, Panama), M. burcheri Anderson (type locality; Cartago, Costa Rica), M. gallettae Anderson (type locality; Darien, Panama), M. hooveri Anderson (type locality; Limón, Costa Rica), M. leopardinus Anderson (type locality; Guanacaste, Costa Rica), M. murdiei Anderson (type locality; Cartago, Costa Rica), M. richdeboeri Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), M. shchepaneki Anderson (type locality; Panama, Panama), M. vaurieae Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), M. wolfensohni Anderson (type locality; Guanacaste, Costa Rica), Rhodobaenus howelli Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), R. labrecheae Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), R. patriciae Anderson (type locality; Puntarenas, Costa Rica), and R. tenorio Anderson (type locality; Limón, Costa Rica). New country records are as follows: Toxorhinus grallarius (Lacordaire) (Costa Rica), Alloscolytoproctus peruanus Hustache (Panama), Cactophagus aurofasciatus (Breme) (Panama) and Metamasius scutiger Champion (Costa Rica). The genera Toxorhinus Lacordaire and Cosmopolites Chevrolat are transferred from Sphenophorini to Litosomini. Notes about the natural history and plant associations for all new species are given where available.

Descriptions or diagnoses, a key to species, new records, and distribution maps are presented for 28 species of Dissochaetus Reitter, 1884 from the countries of Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama). An additional previously recorded species (D. monilis (Murray)) was not recognized. Eight new species are described: D. ancyclostylus Peck and Cook n. sp. of Panama and Costa Rica; D. barrahonda Peck and Cook n. sp. of Costa Rica; D. carinatus Peck and Cook n. sp. of Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; D. cerroverde Peck and Cook n. sp. of El Salvador; D. chelatus Peck and Cook n. sp. of Honduras, Costa Rica and Mexico; D. dendrodes Peck and Cook n. sp. of Guatemala; D. multisetus Peck and Cook of El Salvador and Guatemala; and D. platyformis Peck and Cook n. sp. of Panama and Costa Rica. New records are given for Dissochaetus ovalis (Kirsch) in Panama; D. hetschkoi Reitter in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; D. fimbriatus (Matthews) in Costa Rica and Panama; D. obscurus Portevin in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica; D. latitarsis Jeannel in Costa Rica; D. mexicanus Jeannel in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua; D. angustilis Salgado-Costas in Costa Rica and Panama; D. confusus Salgado-Costas in Costa Rica and Panama; D. costaricensis Salgado-Costas in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica; D. forticornis Salgado-Costas in Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama; D. solisi Salgado-Costas in Costa Rica; D. unidentatus Salgado-Costas in Costa Rica; D. chiapensis Peck and Cook in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Panama; D. claviformis Peck and Cook in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras; D. lobatus Peck and Cook in El Salvador and Honduras; D. newtoni Peck and Cook in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama; and D. reniformis Peck and Cook in Honduras. All the species are carrion and dung scavengers in semi-arid to wet forests, from near sea-level to 2600 m in elevation, and some are known as troglophilic scavengers on bat guano in caves or in burrows of Orthogeomys Merriam (Geomyidae) rodents, and debris piles of Eciton Latreille Army ant bivouacs.

Ciencia social en Costa Rica: experiencias de vida e investigaciónLa voluntad radiante: cultura impresa, magia y medicina en Costa Rica, 1897-1932Lucha electoral y sistema político en Costa Rica, 1948-1998

Recently, a novel purple-pericarp super-sweetcorn line, 'Tim1' (A1A1.sh2sh2) was derived from the purple-pericarp maize 'Costa Rica' (A1Sh2.A1Sh2) and white shrunken2 (sh2) super-sweetcorn 'Tims-white' (a1sh2.a1sh2), however, information regarding anthocyanin biosynthesis genes controlling purple colour and sweetness gene is lacking. Specific sequence differences in the CDS (coding DNA sequence) and promoter regions of the anthocyanin biosynthesis structural genes, anthocyanin1 (A1), purple aleurone1 (Pr1) and regulatory genes, purple plant1 (Pl1), plant colour1 (B1), coloured1 (R1), and the sweetcorn structural gene, shrunken2 (sh2) were investigated using the publicly available annotated yellow starchy maize, B73 (NAM5.0) as a reference genome. In the CDS region, the A1, Pl1 and R1 gene sequence differences of 'Tim1' and 'Costa Rica' were similar, as they control purple-pericarp pigmentation. However, the B1 gene showed similarity between the 'Tim1' and 'Tims-white' lines, which may indicate that it does not have a role in controlling pericarp colour, unlike the report of a previous study. In the case of the Pr1 gene, in contrast to 'Costa Rica', 6- and 8-bp dinucleotide (TA) repeats were observed in the promoter region of the 'Tims-white' and 'Tim1' lines, respectively, indicating the defective functionality (redder colour in 'Tim1' rather than purple in 'Costa Rica') of the recessive pr1 allele. In sweetcorn, the structural gene (sh2), sequence showed similarity between purple-sweet 'Tim1' and its white-sweet parent 'Tims-white', as both display a shrunken phenotype in their mature kernels. These findings revealed that the developed purple-sweet line is different to the reference yellow-nonsweet line in both the anthocyanin biosynthesis and sweetcorn genes.

The genus Mexitrichia Mosely, 1937 (27 described species) is synonymized with Mortoniella Ulmer, 1906 (22 described species) and a revised generic description is provided for the genus. These species are placed in 4 recognized species groups. Mexican and Central American species of Mortoniella are revised to include 6 species formerly placed in Mexitrichia and 22 new species from Costa Rica, Panama, and Mexico. New species combinations for these regional species include: Mortoniella florica (Flint, 1974), M. leroda (Mosely, 1937), M. meralda (Mosely, 1954), M. pacuara (Flint, 1974), M. rancura (Mosely, 1954), and M. rovira (Flint, 1974). New species of Mortoniella described here (followed by the country of provenance) include M. akantha (Costa Rica) M. anakantha (Costa Rica) M. aviceps (Costa Rica, Panama) M. brachyrhachos (Mexico), M. buenoi (Mexico), M. carinula (Costa Rica), M. caudicula (Costa Rica), M. falcicula (Mexico), M. mexicana (Mexico) M. munozi (Costa Rica, Panama), M. opinionis (Costa Rica), M. panamensis (Panama), M. papillata (Costa Rica), M. pectinella (Panama), M. propinqua (Costa Rica), M. redunca (Costa Rica), M. rodmani (Costa Rica), M. sicula (Costa Rica), M. stilula (Costa Rica), M. tapanti (Costa Rica, Panama), M. taurina (Costa Rica, Panama), and M. umbonata (Panama). Males of all known Mexican and Central American species are illustrated or reillustrated and a key is provided for males of the species.

The history of conservation in Latin America offers insights into the dramatic environmental transformations the region has undergone, particularly in the twentieth century. Sterling Evans’s Green Republic explores the history of conservation in Costa Rica, with an emphasis on environmental policy. While journalists, policymakers, and others have pointed to Costa Rica as a model of conservation policy, Evans questions whether it is appropriate to call Costa Rica a “green republic.” Using a wide range of sources, including interviews, archives, and newspapers, Evans paints a complex and nuanced picture of how conservation emerged in twentieth-century Costa Rica.Costa Rica’s exemplary and well-publicized conservation projects have emerged as a response to an equally dramatic but less well-known process of environmental destruction. Between 1950 and 1990, Costa Rica lost 65 percent of its forest cover. The causes of this deforestation included the expansion of export agriculture (particularly bananas and coffee), cattle ranching, and forestry. Government programs to distribute land to landless peasants (precaristas) also inadvertently promoted forest destruction. Evans argues that Costa Rica, like many other countries in Latin America, has faced an “agricultural dilemma” in which policymakers try to balance the drive for agricultural development with the need for environmental conservation.Part 1, “Costa Rica’s History of Conservation,” traces the emergence of conservation policy in Costa Rica as a response to this agricultural dilemma. Until the 1950s, most conservation policy in Costa Rica was ad hoc. The government created a few national parks, and some wildlife conservation agencies. Several conservation laws had been decreed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but they were never adequately enforced. Evans argues that the key turning point in Costa Rica’s conservation policy was the Ley Forestal of 1969. The law did not improve the problem of deforestation overnight—indeed, some of Costa Rica’s worst deforestation happened after the law had passed—but it did provide the basis for later conservationist action.The centerpiece of Costa Rica’s official conservation programs was its system of national parks. This system was the brainchild of Mario Boza, an energetic Costa Rican naturalist who worked for the government. Boza began building the system of national parks during the 1960s and 1970s, with the political backing of international conservation groups and influential Costa Ricans such as Karen Olsen de Figueres, the wife of the president. His projects bore fruit, and conservation efforts in Costa Rica continued unabated even through the economic crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Government agencies became more entrepreneurial, soliciting funding from international organizations such as the Sierra Club and the World Wildlife Federation. In the late 1980s, the national park system underwent a “philosophical change in strategy,” that emphasized incorporating national parks and preserves into the nation’s larger socioeconomic context. Once again, Costa Rica’s fiscal problems were turned into a conservation oppor tunity, through the “debt for nature swap” programs that allowed Costa Rica to write off parts of its foreign debt in return for placing more lands under conservation.The chapters of part 2, “Building a Green Republic,” explore other forces that promoted conservation in Costa Rica. Environmental education at all levels has contributed to forming a rudimentary environmental ethic in Costa Rica, although Evans questions how deeply rooted it is. Costa Rican and foreign non-governmental organizations have played an increasingly important role in promoting conservation through research, training, grassroots activism, and legislation. Ecotourism took off during the 1980s and 1990s, bringing the hoped-for economic boom to Costa Rica. But it has become such a success that it threatens to harm the very flora and fauna that attract the visitors in the first place. Costa Ricans have also organized a national institute for biodiversity (InBio), to do a survey of Costa Rica’s biological resources.While Costa Rica is not the “ecotopia” that many people claim, Evans argues that it has enjoyed a number of short-term conservation successes. This lucid and thoughtful work will be useful to historians and policymakers, and as a textbook for graduate and undergraduate courses on agriculture, development, and conservation in Latin America.

El verdadero anticomunismo: Política, género y Guerra Fría en Costa Rica (1948–1973)

The Saints of Progress: A History of Coffee, Migration, and Costa Rican National Identity

Megalota Diakonoff, previously known from the Indoaustralian Region (India, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, and Australia), Madagascar, and Africa, is reported from the Neotropics for the first time. Three previously described New World species (i.e., Megalota submicans (Walsingham), n. comb.; M. delphinosema (Walsingham), n. comb.; and M. plenana (Walker), n. comb.) were concealed within incorrect generic assignments or as “unplaced” species (i.e., lacking contemporary generic assignments). Twenty-one new species are described and illustrated: M. synchysis (TL: Venezuela), M. peruviana (Peru), M. aquilonaris (Mexico), M. vulgaris (Costa Rica), M. cacaulana (Brazil), M. macrosocia (Ecuador), M. ochreoapex (Costa Rica), M. spinulosa (Costa Rica), M. simpliciana (Costa Rica), M. jamaicana (Jamaica), M. ricana (Costa Rica), M. ceratovalva (Venezuela), M. bicolorana (Costa Rica), M. longisetana (Costa Rica), M. deceptana (Costa Rica), M. crassana (Costa Rica), M. gutierrezi (Costa Rica), M. chamelana (Mexico), M. beckeri (Brazil), M. flintana (Brazil), and M. pastranai (Argentina). Males of the genus are characterized by three distinctive features of the genitalia: the uncus consists of a pair of greatly expanded, flattened, variably round or square lobes, densely covered with spines and setae; the valvae are narrow with an elongate, apically spined process arising from the base of the costa; and the juxta is membranous with a narrowly sclerotized Uor J-shaped posterior edge. Five species have been reared from Croton spp. (Euphorbiaceae) in Costa Rica, and this is consistent with a single record of this host for an Australian species of Megalota.

Costa Rican Psychiatrists Proud of MH Care System

Sixty-six families from Costa Rica with multiply ill sets of siblings were examined in detailed clinical evaluations and compared with 59 similarly evaluated families from the USA. Eighty-six unrelated Costa Rican individuals with a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis and no other ill siblings were an additional comparison group. This study was undertaken to examine whether schizophrenia in Costa Rica has similar clinical and demographic characteristics to that in the USA, whether a homogeneous population such as that in Costa Rica might harbor a specific definable subtype, and whether singletons have similar or differing characteristics from individuals in multiplex families. Overall, schizophrenia in Costa Rica is similar to that in any other geographic location. The same symptoms, sex ratio and age of onset characteristics predominate. However, there was significantly less prevalence of affective symptoms (depression and mania) and drug abuse among the Costa Rican multiplex families by comparison with those from the USA. The families with only one ill member from Costa Rica had significantly more alcohol abuse than the multiply affected families. Within multiplex families (both USA and Costa Rica), age of onset was found to have a familial component. Family sibship size was significantly greater in Costa Rica than the USA for the generation with illness studied. However, these siblings had overall fewer children. In Costa Rica, the male but not the female siblings with schizophrenia had reduced fecundity compared with their well siblings. These families from Costa Rica will be used in further molecular genetic studies to determine whether the illness etiology can be traced to one or more specific genetic linkages.

Organ donation and transplantation in Central America.

Overview.- The role of national institutions and international cooperation in the development of the geological sciences in the Central American-Caribbean region.- The known and potential resource base for economic development in the Central American-Caribbean region.- Geodynamic map of Costa Rica.- Central America and the north Caribbean: Resource implications inferred from paleomagnetic data and plate tectonic history.- The status of mineral production in the Caribbean Basin countries.- Circum-Caribbean sedimentary basin development and timing of hydrocarbon maturation as a function of Caribbean Plate tectonic evolution.- The human and economic losses of selected natural disasters in Latin America, 1970-1987.- Central American resource studies.- Petroleum Resources.- Caribbean region: Perspectives on petroleum.- Sedimentary basins of Costa Rica: Late Mesozoic-Cenozoic evolution and hydrocarbon potential.- An integrated geological and geophysical interpretation of the San Carlos basin, Costa Rica.- Preliminary tectonic outline of northern Guatemala.- The Coban Formation in the Peten basin, Guatemala.- The petroleum potential of the Netherlands Antilles.- Sedimentary basins and petroleum potential of Puerto Rico.- An oil and gas assessment of the U. S. continental slope in the Gulf of Mexico.- The perpetual mystery of petroleum migration.- Summary of working group session on petroleum resources.- Coal and Peat Resources.- Coal in the Central American-Caribbean region.- Exploration, development, and utilization of coal in Costa Rica.- Coal resources of the Baja Talamanca area of Costa Rica.- A mining design project for the Zent coal, Limon, Costa Rica.- Utilizing coal in the cement industry in Costa Rica.- Coal districts of Venezuela.- Status of coal exploration in the Atlantic coast of Colombia.- Opportunities for collaborating in utilization of clean coal technologies.- Peat deposits of Central America and the Caribbean region.- Deposits of peat in Costa Rica.- Economics of selected energy applications of peat in Panama and Costa Rica.- Recommendations of the working group on coal and peat.- Geothermal Resources.- Status and geologic setting of geothermal fields in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean.- Seismological studies at the Miravalles geothermal project.- Geophysical exploration of Las Pailas geothermal field, Rincon de la Vieja, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica.- Momotombo geothermal field.- Current status of geothermal activities in Guatemala.- Geothermal prefeasibility studies in Honduras.- Prefeasibility geothermal assessment of Platanares, Department of Copan, Honduras.- An economic prefeasibility study of geothermal energy development at Platanares, Honduras.- Application of geothermal energy to mineral processing: Cyanide heap-leaching of low-grade gold ore.- Environmental impacts associated with geothermal exploration, development, and power generation.- Summary and recommendations of the working group on geothermal resources.- Industrial Minerals and Metallic Mineral Resources.- The outlook for volcanic-hosted gold deposits in the Republic of Costa Rica.- Origin of gold from the Golfo Dulce placer province, southern Costa Rica.- Nickel potential of the Caribbean Plate and adjacent regions.- The Jamaican bauxite industry: Glimpses into its past, present, and future.- Mineral-energy resources in the Dominican Republic.- Selected precious-metal occurrences in the Lesser Antilles.- Biogeochemistry for future mineral resource exploration programs in the Central American-Caribbean region.- Industrial minerals-Key to economic development.- The occurrence, production, and trade of non-metallic industrial minerals in Costa Rica.- A provisional study of Costa Rican diatomites as raw materials for filter-aids.- Summary and recommendations of the minerals working group.- Water Resources.- The distinctive hydrology of tropical islands.- A Quaternary volcanic aquifer system in Central America: Key factors in groundwater potential and protection.- Structure and depositional patterns and their influence on the hydraulic conductivity of fan-deltas in southern Puerto Rico.- Karst localities in Costa Rica and their geologic background.- Summary statement for hydrology session working group.- Geologic Hazards.- Landslides on the Panama Canal.- Geologic hazards in Honduras.- Extent and social-economic significance of slope instability in the island of Hispaniola.- Use of seismic refraction techniques for investigating recent landslides in a tropical rain forest in Puerto Rico.- Report of the working group on natural hazards.

This collection of 15 essays originated in a 1999 conference held at the University of Costa Rica to celebrate the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage in that country. Four chapters on the struggles of female academics to establish themselves, as well as the discipline of gender studies, in Costa Rica’s universities form the second part of the book. The longer first part consists of six essays on feminist struggles in Costa Rica during the twentieth century and five on other topics. These include Asunción Lavrin’s survey of suffragist arguments across Latin America, historical case studies of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Panama, and an essay on Chicana history. The theme of women’s suffrage ties together most, but not all, of the essays—most of which rely on extensive primary documentation.The section on gender and higher education in Costa Rica celebrates the gains made by female students and academics since the 1970s, but it also warns of ongoing sexism in academia at all levels. The greatest accomplishment of feminist academics in Costa Rica has been the creation, in 1993, of a master’s program in women’s studies, run jointly by the University of Costa Rica and the National University. Women have also made gains in nontraditional majors, in administration, and in research. Feminist historiography itself has progressed rapidly in Costa Rica in the past decade, not least with a previous volume also edited by Eugenia Rodríguez Sáenz, Entre silencios y voces: Género e historia en América Central, 1750–1990 (Centro Nacional Para el Desarrollo de la Mujer y la Familia, 1998).This collection’s essays on Costa Rican history contribute somewhat unevenly to that historiography: they tend to assume prior understanding of the forces and phases of the nation’s political history from the 1910s, and they could more directly speak to each other. Rodríguez Sáenz’s piece surveys the struggle for the vote, particularly from the founding of the Liga Feminista in 1923, while Virginia Mora Carvajal examines the enthusiastic participation of women in the prosuffrage Partido Reformista’s 1923 campaign. Rosalila Herrera Zavaleta profiles the small but vocal group of Communist Party–affiliated female teachers in the 1930s who explicitly questioned the value of suffrage. The best known of these revolutionary women was Carmen Lyra, who published (along with Magda Portal and Gabriela Mistral) in El Repertorio Americano, a modernist magazine that is the focus of Ruth Cubillo Paniagua’s essay. Also part of the feminist milieu of 1930s Costa Rica was Yolanda Oreamuno, the subject of Emilia Macaya Trejos’s essay of literary criticism. Together, these essays confirm that feminism thrived in Latin America’s smaller republics and that it was broadly similar to that of, say, Argentina and Mexico in terms of the influence of liberalism, modernism, leftist and labor movements, and access to higher education. Feminism and women’s activism outside San José is a topic that is broached but not explored in depth.Both Yolanda Marco’s notable essay on the 1936 women’s suffrage debate in Panama’s Congress and Rodríguez Sáenz’s discussion of similar debates in Costa Rica illustrate Lavrin’s argument that the prosuffrage position in Latin America was framed more in terms of individual rights than in terms of building democratic systems. Marco also argues persuasively that it was the highly competitive nature of Panamanian politics in the late 1930s, and not traditional views, that defeated suffrage proposals. Certainly, the Panamanian feminist movement was remarkably strong. K. Lynn Stoner’s piece on the causes and effects of early women’s suffrage in Cuba also suggests the importance of traditional political calculus over principle in understanding women’s suffrage in Latin America. Marco (echoing Mora Carvajal’s study of disenfranchised women party activists in Costa Rica) points out that expressions of female citizen identity long preceded its formal recognition by the state. Finally, Marco stands out for her reference to race: Panamanian feminists argued that if the San Blas Indians had the vote, they deserved it even more so.Neither Sara Poggio’s essay on Chicana history nor Victoria González’s on Nicaragua engage the question of suffrage, but in different ways both highlight the impact of expanding U.S. presence on Latin American women and on constructions of gender and nation in Latin America. Finally, Sylvia Chant contributes a fine ethnographic study of working-class masculine identity in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica.This volume will appeal most to specialists on Costa Rica and on Central American women’s history. It is also a useful reminder to all that women’s history and the discipline of women’s studies are not limited to the larger nations of Latin America that tend to dominate the literature.

Chronic kidney disease in Costa Rica