Local villagers can be involved with the research program as either insect collectors or technical assistants. Both participate in insect sampling. However, the assistants further prepare the insect material for taxonomic studies and sort it to morphospecies. Insect assignment is then checked by the principal investigators and collaborating taxonomists. Usually, assistants include young people with often little formal education, coming from villages relying mostly on forest resources. Thus, their traditional knowledge of forest animals and plants can be easily developed into skills which are crucial to the research program. The encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world by New Guineans is well known and has been noted by several ecologists (e.g., Diamond, 1989).
The assistants function as "parataxonomists" with extra training in general entomology, curation and computing. This parataxonomist approach follows the footsteps of the National Insitute of Biodiversity in Costa Rica (INBio) (e.g., Janzen, 1988). The training of "insect parataxonomists" in Papua New Guinea was initiated by Larry Orsak at Wau Ecology Institute; earlier projects at Wau within our research program also hired local assistants, mostly as insect collectors and for simple laboratory-oriented tasks. Our programs of training parataxonomists were further developed at Christensen Research Institute (CRI) in Madang from 1994 to 1997, focusing particularly on skills in microscope and computer work. Our parataxonomist training continues now as an independent program (Basset et al. 2000), based at the Parataxonomist Training Center in Madang. Currently, 9 full-time research assistants and 15 part-time local collectors are involved in the project. Training of the assistants in the context of our research program includes:
As one example of the benefit of this training, parataxonomists often give talks in public schools and villages about the value of preserving the environment; Chris Dal, William Boen and Markus Manumbor gave formal scientific presentations at the meetings of the New Guinea Biological Society in 1997 and 2000, and Martin Kasbal wrote a booklet on traditional use of plants in a PNG village. One of the parataxonomists, Brus Isua, is in charge of an small bush laboratory in his village, built in a traditional village house and equipped for simple feeding tests to establish host plant range of insect herbivores, insect rearing and mounting insect specimens. This laboratory is thus producing valuable ecological data and insect specimens from a remote rainforest area.
Our current parataxonomist training programmes (including possibilities for assistance to other biological research projects in Papua New Guinea) are detailed at the homepage of the PARATAXONOMIST TRAINING CENTER.
A more detailed description of parataxonomist training can be also found in:
Novotny, V., Basset, Y., Miller, S.E., Allison, A., Samuelson, G.A. & Orsak, L. (1997) The diversity of tropical insect herbivores: an approach to collaborative international research in Papua New Guinea. In: Proceeding of the International Conference on Taxonomy and Biodiversity Conservation in the East Asia (eds. B.H. Lee, J. C. Choe & H. Y. Han), Korean Institute for Biodiversity research of Chonbuk National University, Chonju, pp. 112-125.
This page last revised 20 November 2000 by vn