Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad

The Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad (INBio) is a private research and biodiversity management center based in Costa Rica. Established in 1989, despite its national status, it operates as a non-governmental, non-profit organization that works in close collaboration with different government institutions, universities, and the private sector to gather knowledge on the country's biological diversity and promote its sustainable use.

The institute's pioneering work led to the curation of a massive biodiversity collection containing over 3.5 million specimens of arthropods, plants, fungi, and mollusks, with individual tracking cataloged under its proprietary computer database, Atta.

Institutional Transition and Asset Transfer

Due to severe operational budget deficits, INBio executed an executive transition agreement with the Costa Rican government in early 2015. On March 27, 2015, INBio officially transferred its entire historical collection of 3.5 million biological specimens to the State, passing permanent curation responsibilities over to the Natural History Department of the National Museum of Costa Rica (MNCR).

Along with the scientific registry, the state assumed management of its electronic databases, shelving arrays, and associated hardware infrastructures. Following this massive structural assets downscale, INBio re-aligned its operational focus to function strictly as a streamlined, self-sustaining scientific "think tank," providing specialized training, international consulting, and regulated bio-prospecting services.

History

Costa Rica decided in 1989 that some sort of organization was necessary to study the biodiversity of Costa Rica. The government did not have the ability at the time to fund a new organization so a handful of scientists and entrepreneurs took the initiative and created the non-profit organization now known as INBio. Among the founders of the institution was Rodrigo Gámez, a remarkable and well known Costa Rican scientist who has a strong desire for teaching people about the importance of biodiversity and its conservation. He received the MAGÓN award (Premio Nacional de Cultura Magón) in 2012, which is an award of great importance that is given every year to someone who has contributed to Costa Rica, in this case related to science. In that same year he received an international award known as the MIDORI prize, given to him in Japan, by a Japanese institution; he has also received a great number of other awards in the past. Rodrigo Gámez is still president at the institution.

In 1995 INBio was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.

In 2014, INBio was jointly awarded the Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award presented by the Asahi Glass Foundation, with Professor Daniel Janzen.

Structure

There are many different components to INBio such as Bio-prospecting, INBioparque, INBio editorial, and the many different research areas such as arthropods, fungi, and plants. Bio-prospecting is the division dealing with finding useful products from the specimens collected. INBio has worked with organizations such as Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. INBioparque is a natural park in Santo Domingo, Heredia, just 85 km (53 mi) north/east of downtown San Jose in Costa Rica. The research programs vary from studying the spider family Oonopidae to compiling a book with all of the genera of known and described flies in Central America. Such a project has never been done in a tropical place with such a large biodiversity.

Areas of activity

The institute's work has chiefly developed in the following areas:

References