Topic: Integrating DNA barcoding into on-going biodiversity inventory of a complex tropical conserved wildland in Costa Rica: how and why
Subject: Systematics, Evolution and Ecology
Visiting Time: Apr 30 - May 6, 2009

Abstract:

Daniel Janzen (born 1939 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.) is an evolutionary ecologist, naturalist, and conservationist and the son of a previous Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He divides his time between his professorship in biology at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA), where he has been since 1976, and his research and field work in Costa Rica, where he is an ad honorem (without remuneration) technical advisor for two long-term and long-range projects, which he conceived and initiated in the early 1970s: Area de Conservación Guanacaste, probably the oldest, largest and most successful habitat restoration project in the world, 1.430 km², located just south of the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border, between the Pacific Ocean and the Cordillera de Tilaran; and the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio), a research organization that has taken the task of inventorying, cataloguing and describing the country's gigantic natural endowment.

Janzen obtained his B.Sc. degree from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1961, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1965. In 1964 he attended as a student a two-month course in tropical biology taught in several field sites throughout Costa Rica, offered by the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS), a consortium of several North American and Costa Rican universities. He went back in 1965 as an instructor and has lectured in at least one of the three yearly courses every year since. Before joining the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania he taught at the University of Kansas (1965–1968), the University of Chicago (1969–1972) and at the University of Michigan (1972–1976). Janzen has also held teaching positions in Venezuela (Universidad de Oriente, Cumaná in 1965-66; Universidad de los Los Andes, Mérida in 1973), and in Puerto Rico (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 1969). From these teaching positions, because of his continuous association with OTS, through his numerous publications and mostly from his exemplary dedication, Janzen has been in close contact and influenced the thinking and ideas of just about every researcher and student of tropical ecology and conservation in the western hemisphere during the last 40 years.

Futher Informatiom:　Daniel H. Janzen...